In 1962, I had a chance to meet and talk with Theodore Bikel, and he said he had met Magaret Barry and learned several songs from her in person, including "She Moved Through the Fair"

The story of the drinking bout came from a writer friend of mine, a fellow named Elmar Lanczos (pronounced "LAHN-chôss"—the name is Hungarian) who spent a couple of years in Dublin trying to pick up a little essence of writers and poets like Joyce and Yeats—and Behan—by osmosis, or at least walking the same streets they had walked. And drinking in the same pubs He couldn't sing for sour apples and didn't try, but he had a huge collection of folk records (about 600, I think), and he would loan them to people such as me (as long as he knew we would take good care of them) so we could learn songs from them. He also threw his house open almost every weekend, so if folkies wanted to drop by and have a songfest, feel free. He died a little over twenty years ago of bone cancer.

One of nature's true noblemen.

Don Firth