Source: Patrick Coneely in The Petrie Collection of The Ancient Music of Ireland.
“The characteristics of the following beautiful, and, in my opinion, very ancient melody, sustain, as I think, very strongly the traditional belief connected with it, namely, that it is an air of Connaught origin, and, more particularly, belonging to the pre-eminently musical county of Mayo. It was noted during the summer of 1839, from the singing of the Galway piper, the late Patrick Coneely, who sang it to Irish words very little expressive of the tender and impassioned sentiment of the melody, – as may be gathered from the line above given, which I have been constrained to preserve as a name for the air.”1
