I first heard this played on the box & sung by a man in a pub in Killarney in 1964. He matched it with a similar tear-jerker @Eileen Alannah' and a waltz version of the 'Rocks of Bawn'- I've sung it to waltz time ever since.
It was the real thing, sentimental or not & in a different class to most of what now passes for folk music....