Crucially
John Edward Walsh, _Ireland sixty years ago_ (1851), Chap. 8 -- Slang Songs [etc.] , for background on Larry, who he was, who might have written the poem, etc.
 
 
There are (at least) nine texts from Dublin in the 1780s relevant to Larry – six poems dealing with criminals and their associates, one written in the same mode of speech, and two parodies:
 
                De Nite afore Larry was stretch'd
                Larry’s Stiff  ["Larry Coffey or Larry's Stiff"]
                Mrs. Coffey
                Larry's Ghost
                Luke Caffrey’s Kilmainham Minit    
                A New Song call'd Luke Caffrey's Gost
 
                Lord Altham's Bull
 
“Larry” Parodies:
               Jemmy O’Brien
                The Sham Squire
 
The issues (as it seems to me) raised by the obliteration of the original text and its dislocation from its historical context:
 

"THE NIGHT BEFORE LARRY WAS STRETCHED"    [c; 1816]  -- Larry

 

                [The c. 1816 above is the date given by Farmer in Musa Pedestris.  Obviously wrong.]

           

            -- how the Anglicised version was virtually universal till recently.

            -- implications of Anglicisation:  obscures the Irish element; and makes Larry sound much like a London criminal – “nubbing cheat”. 

            -- overlap and difference of Irish and English cant ballads.

            -- possible link between Dublin colloquial speech and AAVE.

 

            i)         Original Larry – “De nite afore Larry was stretched …”

            ii)        Who wrote Larry? or memories from Dublin Sixty Years Since

            iii)       The other Kilmain songs

            iv)       Alternative Ireland – The Rake’s Lament – gallows whores or flash girls?

            v)         Larry, Father Prout, Noctes Ambrosianae, and Farmer’s Musa Pedestris…

 

I can write no more (for the moment, at least) – my brains are broken.

 

Robin