J·.::mRNAL OF THE COUNTY :DONEGAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY ~elen's . jewels (which she had given him for sa.fe keeping) and also with abduction. He i:s· found guilty on the latter charge and sentenced .to seven yeats'. transportation. Helen becomes iilsane but recov,&rs on Reilly's · return when _he shows her the ring she ·had given him at · hLs trial · that _he might think on her p0or'broken heart when in a foreign land. The a:ged parent now ;waives all ob,j.e.rtions to their union; they get married and leave for France where they live ha.ppily ever ·after. 111 f1) Obert Fo!liott of Holly- ~ brook ?ied in 1746 1Bvmg 1ss1ue one daughter }lary, wife of John Harlow, of Rothff ulle11 : ":Seon JI.ado" of C:i.~ola ~'s poem of !hat title). fl{;•Jert s estates passed ·to his ~?usm, General John Fo!liott, '·•Overnor of Ross Castle who difd :.apparently unmarried and without ma'.e issue) at 20 Moleswor th St., Dublin, in l\762. He was succeeded by his cousin, Lt. G?n. John Folliott, Gov:rnor of Kinsale a:id of the Royal Ho·s1pit2l, K1lmamham, who died 1765 having had issue Francis. John' Mary, Le~ itia, Henry and Peter'. Of · the two da1,!g-Mers, Mary is not . recorded (.Burke, Landed Gentry, 1~9, "ffolliott") as having been married but if she was alive when her f.ather succeeded to Holybrook in 1762 she must have been middle·aged. The eldest son, Francis. was disinherited for marrying ·a beautiful young girl named Barbara Allen from the Dublin Quays, who seems to have been strangely remiss in not ins•piring anot•her ballad .saga on the Scarlet Town model. The marriage is, strangely enough recorded as having taken place as late as 1765, the year of the father's death. The estates reve1r>ted in time to John, son of Francis, and in the meantime were tenanted 1by , William Ph~bhs until Phibbs died in 1801. Jbhn Folliott married in 1793 and his daughters, according to Burke (opJcit.) all married, save 284. Sus.an, who "died . unmarried." There appe.ars to be no eligihle candidate in the foregoing for the charareter of the Colleen Ba1wn, and at no time· does the stage seem to have been set at Holybrook for the· action of the drama. The Folliotts occupied ,a;nother mansion ~ house, in County Donegal, i.e. Ballymacward or Wardtown House, overlooking the estuary of the Erne at Ballyshannon. This house was built according to Allingham .(His{ory a n d Antiquities of Ballyshannon, 1879,) by "General Folliott" about 1740. It was occupied by Col. Folliott in 1752 (Pococke's Tour). These t1wo name3 aippear to refer .to General Folliott, .c;;;overnor Of Ross, who died in 17&2. The ballad of "Willy ReiUy" has always been 1particularly popular in Ulste.r and some r2sea.rcaes of mine in Donegal indicated that there had been a ~ong and tenacious tradition there that Ward>town was the true scene of the .R to-illy story, but that rhe tradition was gradu:illy dying under the infuence of the rival place in County Sligo behg vouched for in Carleton's book. The S'hIeds of tradit ion, such as they were, led me to the conc~usion that the hallad of "E·rin's Lovely Horne," which I hJd already sw1pected to relate to Willy Reilly, dealt with events ai Wardtown House and should have been written "Erne's Lovely Home." As to the real date of the affair, all the evidence suggests the first or second decade of the 19th century. If Reilly was sentenced to transportation he may ha-ve been given the option of serving in the rwars ag·ainst Napoleon. A note to Carleton's version of the "Willy Reilly" ballad, published 1887 in Irish Ministrelsy, an ant!).ology edited by H. HaUiday ~iparling, states that the story on which the ballad was founded h8!pipened some "eighty years ago," i.e. circ. 1807.
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