Music of Ireland
The melody, as notated in O’Neill's "Music of Ireland" (1903), is in the mixolydian mode. This was based on a setting published in O'Daly's "Poets and Poetry of Munster" in 1849. Another version was published in "Irish Music and Song" (1888) by Joyce, who described O'Daly's setting as "so overladen with ornamental notes that the melody is quite obscured [...] I have given here, without any ornamentation, the simple vocal melody as I knew it from my earliest days". Joyce took the song's text from Edward Walsh's "Irish Popular Songs".