Unlike the happy return of The New Erin Go Bragh, this return after “years have pass’d o’er” is tragic. The man’s wife and babe are “dust in the grave.” Why he left is unclear. From the amount of time gone past, he might have left after his family died.
According to a note in the Alexandria Expositor, where the text was published on July 12, 1805, the “ensuing charming lines are introduced in a novel of much merit, written by Miss Porter, sister of the celebrated artist.” Credit to Anna Maria Porter is supported by the appearance in the Ladies Monthly Museum of “O Woods of Green Erin” titled The Exile’s Return. The Words . . . by Miss A. M. Porter (1827). Porter (1780-1832) was an Englishwoman, younger sister of novelist Jane and artist Robert Ker Porter. Anna Porter’s first novels, The Lake of Killarney (1804) and A Sailor’s Friendship, and a Soldier’s Love (1805) were published in America, but the poem does not appear in either of these editions.
The song appeared with minor word differences from the broadside version as “a translation from the ancient Irish” in the New York Western Star, and Harp of Erin on December 19. Both text and tune, whose opening is reminiscent of the well-known Irish melody called “Black Joke,” were printed in John Henderson’s Flowers of Irish Melody (1847) and survived in Scottish tradition as well. For the tune of “Black Joke” see “A Sprig of Shillelah, and Shamrock So Green” on Bunch of Rushes. The tune was also known as “Kathleen O’More” (Shuldham-Shaw, Lyle, and Hunter 6:474; Roud #6782). George Linley (1798-1865) composed new music for this lyric that was published as Woods of Green Erin, Irish Ballad.
The love lyrics of “Delia” were written by John Cunningham (1729-73), son of a Dublin wine cooper who wrote verse imitative of Gray and Shenstone. Published as “Delia: A Pastoral” in Cunningham’s Poems, Chiefly Pastoral (1771), they were set to music by both Thomas Arne and Franz Kotzwara (d. 1791), both highly florid bravura pieces for a well-trained voice. The text appeared in six songsters between 1788 and 1815 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters; Wolfe, Secular Music #5118).
For “The Rose,” see the same text on Major Andre.
