Why do people keep adding their tuppennyworth "I think it's pledge"? Of course it's "pledge". That's what Kavanagh wrote, as was pointed out long ago. A matter of simple fact, not open to dispute. Why nobody bothered to nip down to the local library to check two years ago beats me.

This isn't a traditional song. Kavanagh only died in 1967, for heaven's sake. The fact that lazy, ignorant people have distorted his song since then (and published it, mutilated, in cheap and nasty collections of mostly fake "Irish" songs) has little to do with the sacred cow of the "folk process." Most people who invoke the term seem to have not the remotest understanding of what it means, and no respect for poor Kavanagh, who, for all his failings, was a better poet than any of the contributors to this thread will ever be.