The song is a variation of a murder ballad called "The Cruel Mother" or "The Greenwood Side" (Child 20, Roud 9), but in an up-tempo version sung by children in the schoolyard.
[2] As in several versions of "The Cruel Mother", the woman stabs the baby in the heart using "a penknife long and sharp," but whereas in "The Cruel Mother" the woman is visited by the ghosts of the children she killed, in "Weela Weela Walya" it is "two policeman and a man" (two uniformed police and a detective, or possibly a psychiatrist), who come to her door and arrest her for the murder.
[9] It was a popular part of the Dubliners' repertoire for decades, appearing on several of their live albums, and was sung at the funeral of Ronnie Drew in 2008.
[10] Virgin Prunes' singers Guggi and Gavin Friday sang a version of the song in the 1981 video Sons Find Devils, titled "Bernie and Attricia Sing" on the related live album.
The song's morbid theme of infanticide, juxtaposed with its childish nature, has made it popular as a cultural reference.
It is mentioned in Sebastian Barry's novel Annie Dunne, Hannah Kent's novel The Good People, Bernard MacLaverty 's Grace Notes and Daniel Shortell's novel th!s, and forms a substantial inspiration for the film The Hole in the Ground, which also features Lisa Hannigan's version of the song.
A version of this song is sung by Liam Neeson in the third chapter ("Meal Ticket") of the 2018 American Western anthology film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.