Rose of Tralee (festival)

The Rose of Tralee International Festival is an annual beauty pageant held in Tralee in County Kerry, featuring contestants from Ireland or from the Irish diaspora. The festival, takes its inspiration from a 19th-century ballad of the same name about a woman called Mary, who because of her beauty was called "The Rose of Tralee". The words of the song are credited to C. Mordaunt Spencer and the music to Charles William Glover, but a story circulated in connection with the festival claims that the song was written by William Pembroke Mulchinock, a wealthy Protestant, out of love for Mary O'Connor, a poor Catholic maid in service to his parents.