The song was first performed in Oxford in July 1898, and first reviewed in the "Entr'acte" on 23 July 1898. "Laguna" of the original song was a village of Native American cave-dwellers somewhere "100 miles off the main line en route to California proceeding from New Orleans." "Lily" was a cave-dwelling Indian girl. The song stood aside from Stuart's other works, in part because Stuart wrote "both" the music and the verses. Stuart wrote that "I wrote the words and music together to a large degree and, consequently, I was able to get effects that the canons of art lay down as being impossible... Instead of ending where, say, the average poet would compel me by the metre of his verse I, writing my own lyrics, add two bars more and get an entirely new effect". The verse section contain a dramatic mood shift of iii minor, to ii minor, to I Major. The arrangement has an oboe obligato play the tune of Lily's call to her flock on her shepherdess's pipe.