source: http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/notes/67374-N.asp

...another Irish song that owes much of its wide popularity to the delightful 
interpretation of John McCormack. He recorded it commercially in November 1939, as 
well as including it in many of his broadcast recitals. It has words by Cathal 
MacCarvey, set to an old Irish tune called ‘My Love Nell’, and it parades the 
charms of a young lady from Banbridge, some twenty-odd miles south-west of Belfast. 
The singer considers those charms surpass those of any other ‘from Bantry Bay up to 
Derry Quay and from Galway to Dublin town’, which is to say the length and breadth 
of Ireland.

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Near Banbridge town, in the County Down 
One morning in July
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she smiled as she passed me by.
She looked so sweet from her two white feet
To the sheen of her nut-brown hair
Such a coaxing elf, I'd to shake myself
To make sure I was standing there.

From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay
And from Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the sweet colleen
That I met in the County Down.

As she onward sped I shook my head
And I gazed with a feeling quare
And I said, says I, to a passerby
"Who's the maid with the nut-brown hair?"
He smiled at me, and with pride says he,
"That's the gem of Ireland's crown.
She's young Rosie McCann from the banks of the Bann
She's the star of the County Down."

From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay
And from Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the sweet colleen
That I met in the County Down.

From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay
And from Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the sweet colleen
That I met in the County Down.

At the harvest fair she'll be surely there
So I'll dress in my Sunday clothes
And I'll try sheep's eyes, and deludhering lies
On the heart of the nut-brown rose.
No pipe I'll smoke, no horse I'll yoke
Till my plow with rust turns brown
Till a smiling bride by my own fireside
Sits the star of the County Down.

From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay
And from Galway to Dublin town
No maid I've seen like the sweet colleen
That I met in the County Down.