 In failing health, he wrote the poem in memory of the hometown he would not live to see again, and posted it to his young nephew in Ireland.Michael Considine died in California in 1873 at the age of twenty-three.The rendition of the late singer/songwriter Robbie McMahon, who died in 2012 at the age of eighty-six, is widely regarded as the definitive version of "Spancil Hill".