The Rose of Tralee International Festival is based on the love song The Rose of Tralee, by William Mulchinock a 19th century wealthy merchant who was in love with Mary O’Connor, his maid. Mary was born in Broguemaker’s Lane in Tralee and worked as a nanny. When William first saw Mary he fell in love with her, but because of the difference in social class between the two families their love affair was discouraged. William emigrated, and some years later returned to Tralee only to find Mary had died of tuberculosis. He was broken hearted and expressed his love for her in the words of the song. Click to read The Rose of Tralee story.

The Festival as it is today stems from Tralee’s Carnival Queen, once a thriving annual town event, fallen by the wayside due to post-war emigration. In 1957 Race Week Carnival was resurrected in Tralee that featured a Carnival Queen. A year later a group of local business people met in Harty’s Bar in Tralee and decided to revamp the Carnival in a way that would regenerate the town, encourage tourism and keep the race crowd in town overnight.

The new event would be called a festival and the carnival queen contest turned into a celebration of the Rose of Tralee song. Young women would also be sought from outside Tralee, and heats were held as far away as London, Birmingham, New York and Dublin with the help of local Kerry people living abroad.

The first Festival in 1959 had Roses representing Tralee, London, Dublin, Birmingham and New York, and cost just IR£750. It is indicative of the growth of the event that by 1965 the budget had grown to IR£10,000. Each Rose had to be a native of Tralee, but this condition was relaxed in the early sixties to be a native of Kerry, and in 1967 “Irish birth or ancestry” became the criterion.

The 1959 Festival was a resounding success with Alice O’Sullivan from Dublin becoming its first Rose. The organising committee extended their sights to include setting up centres in other areas, beginning with the United States. As well as Ireland, the UK and the US, the Festival now has centres in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Dubai and Luxembourg.

The original proposed title of the event was the Festival of Tralee. However a member of the New York Kerrymen’s Association recommended Festival of Kerry as a title that would facilitate support by Kerry émigrés from other parts of the county. It was in the 1970s that editor of The Kerryman newspaper, Seamus McConville, suggested that the title Rose of Tralee International Festival be used to strengthen the link to the song and to reflect the growth of the event worldwide.

The first Rose Selection took place at a dance. After a few years it moved to the Ashe Memorial Hall in Tralee town centre (then used as a cinema) with seating for 680 people. By 1972 it was obvious that the demand for tickets far outstripped capacity. The International Eisteddfod in Wales used a large marquee-like structure and this became the model for the Rose of Tralee Festival Dome which first appeared in 1973 at a cost exceeding £17,500 (the total Festival budget for 1972). Irish folk singer Johnny McEvoy topped the bill on the Dome’s opening night. The original Dome was destroyed in a storm on the last day of the 1983 festival.

The town’s impressive street lighting put up especially each year for the Festival was first introduced in the early sixties. Pieces were brought from the Blackpool Illuminations, which gives an idea of the extent and impact of the display. The streets of Tralee were bathed in coloured windmills, lighted clowns, floral arrangements and rockets all surplus to Blackpool requirements and restored by ESB electricians.

The ESB was the first company to install extensive lighting and moving parts on a float (others involved a cable trailing from the car in front to run a few spotlights). One of the most spectacular floats ever built was an ESB helicopter with flashing lights and revolving r

Mary O'Connor, the Rose of Tralee, was one of the 'rest'. She lived in Brogue Lane, in the rock, which took its name from the busy hive of brogue-makers who lived and worked there. There, in a thatched cabin, Mary lived with her parents, two sisters Brigid and Ellen, and a young brother Willie. Her father in common with most of the lane was a brogue-maker. Her mother, an O'Sullivan from Green Lane, still worked as a dairymaid in the farm yard at Cloghers House.
Mary was a great beauty. She was dark with large lustrous eyes. But good looks or no, only one kind of life awaited girls of her type, that of maid or helper of some kind in the local big house. When she was about seventeen she was employed as a kitchen-maid to the Mulchinock.

Here Micheal Mulchinock lived with his wife and family. The Mulchinock family were wealthy merchants having a woollen and linen draper's shop where the Munster Warehouse now stands. Micheal married a Margaret McCann of Tralee and continued to live at West Villa. However this Micheal Died of a violent high fever on the Sunday preceding the 2nd of November 1828' and so when Mary O'Connor was accepted in its kitchen Margaret Mulchinock ruled over West Villa. Here Margaret lived with her sons William Pembroke, Edward and Henry and her married daughter, Maria.

Margaret Mulchinock presided over West Villa with no little ceremony. The family owned a considerable amount of land adjoining the house and in the neighborhood generally as well as considerable house property in the town itself. They kept the usual retinue of servants, coachmen, gardeners and farm hands.

Mary O'Connor was naturally pleased with her employment in the household kitchen. She was not long thus, however, when Margaret's daughter, Maria, seeing she was intelligent and kind to her children choose her as children's maid for little Anne and Margaret.

By this time Micheal's sons William Pembroke and Edward had grown to be young men. William, however, was becoming a dreamer, a good-for-nothing and what was worse in the eyes of the family, a poet.

In November 1840 sorrow came to William's life: Henry, His younger brother, died. William was inconsolable. He lost his companion to whom he told nanny a secret, things he would never breathe to the more practical brother Edward.


For him of the fair young brow I weep,
Who takes in the churchyard now his sleep;
For he was the star above Sun-bright,
That tinged with the light of love My night.
His Mother and Uncle John became worried at the way he had taken Henry's death, but, after a time, William gradually returned to his old self and was soon partaking in the usual pastimes that occupied wealth young gentlemen of the time. On such pastime was the October fair of Ballinasloe. It was there at a Ball that he met Alice Keogh:


And nightly and daily, my time is passed gaily,
From pleasure to pleasure I'd merrily go;
My thoughts all elysian, till flashed on my vision,
The peerless young Alice of Ballinasloe.
Despite his protestations of love to Alice, however, William soon returned back home again. His native town with its Lee called him. He had travelled far and seen much, from Shannon to Slaney and Barrow to Bann but:


Fairer than all and dearer
Was the sweet and gentle Lee
And far fairer too perhaps were the colleens of sweet Tralee.



Back then he came to West Villa. Maria, his sister, received him. They talked for a while. Then she suggested that perhaps he would like to see the children. Yes, they were with their nursemaid. She had got rather a good little girl from the town to mind dear Anne and Margaret. So William was ushered into the nursery. There they were, little Anne and Margaret. And how they ran to him and tugged at his coat-tails and wanted to be lifted up. But somehow William was not heeding them. He was gazing instead at a wonderful pair of eyes that had utterly transfixed him. There was some power in them which held him there loo

The pale moon was rising above the green mountain
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea
When I strayed with my love to the pure crystal fountain
That stands in beautiful vale of Tralee.
She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer
Yet, 'twas not her beauty alone that won me
Oh no! 'Twas the the truth in her eye ever beaming
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.
The cool shades of evening their mantle were spreading
And Mary all smiling was listening to me
The moon through the valley her pale rays was shedding
When I won the heart of the Rose of Tralee.
Though lovely and fair as the rose of the summer
Yet, 'twas not her beauty alone that won me
Oh no! 'Twas the the truth in her eye ever beaming
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.