‘This lovely song is in the spirit of the medieval songs of courtly love, which persisted in Europe throughout Elizabethan times and finally became part of the folk song deposit of Britain and Ireland. Songs like I Attempt from Love’s Sickness to Fly have their folk counterparts in songs like Tavern Green:

O Love it is a killing thing
Have you ever felt the pain?

Paddy thinks this song has been brought over by Irish labourers to Donegal from Scotland. Certainly some of its verses are well-known in Scots folksong’ (Seán O Boyle, The Irish Edge).

A song entitled Oh Love it is a Killing Thing is published in Joyce’s Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (no. 405). Joyce was reproducing the text from memory and, while it does not mention Tavern Green, nor is there an equivalent to the verse about Queen Anne, there is no denying very strong parallels with Bonny Tavern Green. Joyce heard it sung ‘in boyhood’, which dates it to well before the Great Famine, perhaps around the early 1830s.

*The notes for songs 28-42, if not covered by earlier entries, have been compiled by John Tunney.