Forms: 7 lilli burlero, Lilly Burleighre, 8 lilibolaro, lille-, lilla-, 8– lillibullero. [Unmeaning.] Part of the refrain (hence, the name and the tune) of a song ridiculing the Irish, popular about 1688.
1688. Pol. Ballads (1860), I. 275. Ho! broder Teague, dost hear de decree? Lilli Burlero, bullen a-la Dat we shall have a new deputie.
1689. Diary, in Topographer (1790), 32. The Chimes at St. Michaels … haveing for some time been made to strike Lilli Burlero.
1697. Vanbrugh, Æsop, V. 66. Dol, de tol dol, dol dol, de tol dol: Lilly Burleighre’s lodg’d in a Bough.
1714. Gay, Sheph. Week, Sat. 116. He sung of Taffey Welch, and Sawney Scot, Lille-bullero, and the Irish Trot.
1759. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, II. ii. He … accustomed himself … to whistle the Lillabullero.
1760. H. Walpole, Lett. to Sir D. Dalrymple, 3 Feb. The mob will never sing lillibullero but in opposition to some other mob.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., ix. (ed. 5), II. 428. One of the characteristics of the good old soldier is his trick of whistling Lillibullero.
Hence Lillibullero v., trans. (nonce-wd.) to sing ‘lillibullero’ over.
1762. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, V. iii. My father managed his affliction otherwise … for he neither wept it away … nor did he … rhyme it, or lillabullero it.
