although Padraic Pearse wrote the lyric, the tune is in P. W. Joyce as 'Oro, 'Se do Bheatha a Bhaile': Oro, Welcome Home!' A Hauling-Home Songhe explains (his italics given in BOLD):
The "Hauling Home" was bringing home the bride to her husband's house after marriage. It was usually a month or so after the wedding, and was celebrated as an occasion next only in importance to the wedding itself. The bridegroom brought back home his bride at the head of a triumphal procession- all on cars or on horseback. I well remember one where the bride rode on a pillion behind her husband. As they entered the house the bridegroom is supposed to speak or sing:- Oro, sé do bheatha a bhaile, is fearr liom tu ná céad bo bainne: Oro, sé do bheatha a bhaile, thá tu maith le rátha.
Oro, welcome home, I would rather have you thana hundred milch cows: Oro, Welcome home, 'tis you are happy with prosperity (in store for you).
Here is Mr. Hogan's note on this air:- "This song used to be played at the 'Hauling Home', or the bringing home of a wife. The piper, seated outside the house at the arrival of the party, playing HARD (i.e. with great spirit): nearly all who were at the wedding a month previous being in the procession. Oh for the good old times!"
This tune is called in Stanford-Petrie an "ancient clan march": and it is set in the Major, with many accidentals, but another setting is given in the Minor. I (Joyce) give it here as Mr. Hogan wrote it, in its proper Minor form. In several particulars this setting differs from Dr. Petrie's two versions. It was a march tune, as he calls it: but the MARCH was home to the husband's house. Dr. Petrie does not state where he procured his two versions.
sorry I can't give the dots, it's in G minor, 2/4 time, marked With great spirit. It's obvious that Pearse knew both the history and use of this tune as a metaphor for Welcoming Ireland Home as a bride, to a free Ireland.