Interesting that Mike Henry was singing the song in Oxford 35 years ago. That's some 5 years prior to the Christy Moore recording (1978) (which I still think is the seminal one). Oxford is quite a geographical and cultural distance from Caher. Wonder where he (Mike Henry) learned it? As far as I can make out, the song was first aired on Irish radio by baritone Seán Ó Síocháin on 'The Balladmakers Saturday Night' in the early 1950s. First in print in SG's 'Ballads of a Bogman' (1955) tho it may have appeard in some local newspaper before that.
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