"Jim ,do you know the origins of the star of sundays well? was it a broadside?"
Almost certainly not Dick - that is, it didn't originate on a broadside and wasn't written especially to be sold
It was the work of a local poet.
There were dozens of poets and songmakers writing in that style in the 19th century - the 'Hedge School influence was certainly there and still lingers in the songs of Con 'Fada' O'Dirisceol
The hedge schools were rural institutions which arose as a reaction to the Penal Laws and largely disappeared in the 1830s
This is Donal Maguire's note to it from his album of the same name
"6. The Star of Sunday's Well
This song adequately thumbs its nose at the purveyors of all those stories which portray the Irish as a race of semi-literate inarticulate numb-skulls. Undoubtedly written with tongue in cheek by W. B. Guiney, it appeared in the Cork Examiner in 1871. It is a masterpiece of rhetoric and abounds with flowery language, a legacy of the penal law period of 'Hedge schools' where not only the 'three R's' were dealt with but the classics as well.
The action takes place in Cork city and this surely is the most eloquent put-down of amorous aspirations you are likely to hear"

Jim Carroll