Oops -- sorry about the previous -- my typing finger slipped.

Here are the two fragments from Ireland in the 1790s:

In Dublin in the 1790s, a song called "The Unfortunate Rake" was being sung on the streets. Although later versions which clearly derive from this song exist, only two stanzas of this progenitor of a whole series of metamorphosed laments remain:

Get six of my comrades to carry my coffin,
Six girls of the city to bear me on,
And each of them carry a bunch of red roses,
So they don't smell me as they walk along.

And muffle your drums, and play your fifes lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me on,
And fire your bright muskets all over my coffin,
Saying: 'There goes an unfortunate rake to his doom!"

This fragment is the only text, so far as I know, to contain the actual phrase "unfortunate rake".

... and:

At about the same time, in Cork, another soldier was dying in a similar fashion, again to the sound of drums:

My jewel, my joy, don't trouble me with the drum,
    Sound the dead march as my corpse goes along;
And over my dead body throw handfuls of laurel,
    And let them all know that I'm going to my rest.

... both the roses and the handfuls of laurel feed in ultimately to "The Unfortunate Lad".

Robin