DESCRIPTION:
Maura O'Connell singing on American Music Shop in the 1990's. I think the accompaniment was at least in part done by her own performing troupe. This version comes from Irish playwright Sean O'Casey's adaption of the earlier poem/song by Canadian schoolteacher George Johnson grieving the imminent death of his young wife Margaret (Maggie). Though the couple were not to enjoy long life together, the poem "When You and I Were Young" contemplates what it might have been to reminisce in old age about their younger days. Some time later J.A. Butterfield composed this hauntingly beautiful music for the poem. Sean O'Casey's play that reintroduced the tune with these words was The Plough and the Stars (1926).