Eamonn O’Doherty (1979) suggests that the title of this tune may stem from an old Irish tradition of planting a special tree as a communal gathering spot. He cites John Dunton (1674), who wrote: “Hither all the people resort with a piper on Sundays and Holy-days in the afternoon, where the young folks dance till the cows come home.”

However, the tune may have originally been known by a different name—”Captain Rock “—as it appears under that title in earlier collections by George Petrie (1880) and Francis O’Neill (1903).