The Fiddler's Companion has this as coming from a piping source, one of O'Neill's associates:
"Dunphy was a piper and one of Captain Francis O’Neill’s sources, and O’Neill titled this nameless tune after him. Although Dunphy contributed the melody it was known to another of O’Neill’s sources, Father Fielding, who had heard his mother lilting it, indicating some circulation in County Kilkenny."
I associate it in my head with my old mate, the great Dublin City piper Donnacha Dwyer. James Morrison's jaunty 78 disk recording of it springs to mind also. It's a nice old one.
