Don't mention it. Sorry I haven't organized everything more clearly and concisely.
To bring words and melody together:
The words of "Garryowen" were probably written about 1780 to something very like the "Auld Bessy" tune, not printed till 1795 (not "1788" as stated).
The tune was being called "Cory Owen," "Cary Owen," and "Garrione" within four years of being identified only as "Harlequin Amulet," after the pantomime in that popularized it in December, 1800. Surely the Irish title wasn't due to a local Limerick song whose lyrics seem to have been unknown elsewhere for decades.
Without broadside printings, the "Bacchus' sons" words could not have been widely known. No copy of those lyrics appears in the Bodleian.
Custer's widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, gives both words and tune as known to the 7th Cavalry in her "Following the Guidon" (1890). The stanzas about the local character Johnny Connell have understandably disappeared. Otherwise the 7th's song is as in Croker and Lenihan.
Croker notes that the "spa" in the song refers to "The spa of Castle Connell, about six miles from Limerick."
Lenihan, by the way, also gives a quite different song written to the tune in 1811 - as well as translations of the original into Latin and Greek!
The tune, called "Auld Bessie" by Scotsman James Aird in 1795, was being called "Cory Owen," "Cary Owen," and "Garrione" within four years of being identified only as "Harlequin Amulet," after the pantomime in that popularized it in December, 1800. Surely the Irish *title* wasn't due to a local Limerick song whose lyrics seem to have been unknown elsewhere for decades.
Whether the melody originated in Ireland, Scotland, or elsewhere is probably unknowable. "Auld Bessy" is Scots. James Byrne, the musical director of "Harlequin Amulet," evidently thought the tune sounded Welsh, but it was described in 1801 as "The Favorite Irish Air Performed on the Harp in Harlequin Amulet" (Musical Journal, I [Baltimore, 1804]). John Peacock's "Tunes" (ca1805) has a version arranged for Northumbrian small pipes that he calls "Newmarket Races."
http://tunearch.org/wiki/Newmarket_Races
But Peacock's arrangement may have been influenced by the newly popular "Harlequin" version. A distinct but structurally related tune appeared as "Horse and Away to Newmarket" in the manuscript of James Biggins of Leeds, dated to "1779." It doesn't *sound* much like "Garryowen," though one can see the similarity.
But the tune's place of origin is less important than the fact that it has been identified with Garryowen and Limerick since at least the beginning of the 19th century.
Thanks especially to "They Died with their Boots On," it is now widely associated with George Armstrong Custer.