The road through life seems an awful lot different looking back than the way it did looking forward.
The melody is adapted from a Turlough O’Carolan tune with the strange title of, Squire Wood’s Lamentation at the Refusal of His Halfpence.
It’s a now obscure reference to a man called Squire William Woods. In 1722, Woods was authorised by the British Government to mint £100,000 of copper coinage for Ireland.
The move was met with a terrible backlash from the Irish amid concerns that the coins didn’t contain the metal of the correct value and would lead to the devaluation of Irish money.
It was huge issue at the time, even attracting the attention of Irish writer Jonathan Swift, who satirised the whole sorry saga in his Draper’s Letters.
We don’t know why Carolan chose to name such a wonderful tune after a completely unmusical theme. Maybe it’s because he wrote so many good melodies he was running out of names to call them.