The Lass of Richmond Hill

The words were written by Leonard McNally[1][2] (1752 – 1820[3]), who was a Dublin barrister, playwright, a leader of the United Irishmen (a clandestine republican Irish revolutionary society[4]), but also a double agent for the British Government.

[5][6] McNally would betray his United Irishmen colleagues to the authorities and then, as defence counsel at their trial, secretly collaborate with the prosecution to secure a conviction.

[2] (Lass is a Scottish or Northern English dialect word for "girl" or "young woman", derived from Old Norse.

The first verse begins with the notable lines:[16] The chorus is: According to the musicologist and conductor Peter Holman, "a way of celebrating national identity was to place a love-story in a picturesque British rural setting.

[18] The music epitomises Hook’s charming but sanitised folk-song style using a Scottish pastoral idiom, and is often mistakenly believed to be a genuine traditional folk song,[19][20] and has been assigned the number 1246 on the Roud Folk Song Index.

[22] The song was first performed publicly by Charles Incledon at Vauxhall Gardens in 1789, although McNally appears to have written the words long before that.