Date of composition. Probably composed first in Jun. 1887. The poem appeared in The Gael, a weekly Gaelic sports paper edited by WBY’s mentor John O’Leary, on 19 Nov. 1887. WBY, who was by then living in London, sent a version (finished that day) to O’Leary on 13 Jun. 1887, after the editor had rejected two earlier ‘Ballads’ (one of which seems to be lost, the other being ‘The Ballad of Moll Magee’) in May: ‘I enclose’, he wrote, ‘a ballad on another Sligo story, something like Douglas Hyde though not suggested by him for I have long had it in my mind’ (CL 1, 19–20). This version is likely to have differed from that published in Nov. By the summer, O’Leary had lost his copy (along with those of the earlier two poems), as he seems to have admitted to the poet shortly after WBY’s letter of 12 Jul., which asks ‘Would you kindly let me have, the two poems you did not care for, back as I did not keep a copy of either’ (CL 1, 27). When WBY learned that all three poems were mislaid, he told O’Leary that ‘I have I find a copy though an imperfect one of my poem. Will I, as Miss Kavanagh suggests work it up and send it to you. Or will we wait to see if the old copy turns up’ (5 Aug. 1887, CL 1, 31). WBY’s reassembly of his poem probably took place between the end of Aug. and Nov.