I got the Ochs record about the time we were reading the poem in my high school English class, so I brought the record in to school & the teacher played it for the class.

I love the Ochs version and I've been singing it (in the shower, and on rare occasions in public) ever since, but when I first heard Andy Irvine sing the McKennitt version I decided there's plenty of room in this world for two different musical settings of that poem.

Actually, I know of a third setting. About 10 years ago an American (or possibly Canadian) singer-songwriter named Barbara Brown sent her new CD to the radio program I was doing, and it had her own setting of The Highwayman. I don't have the CD any more, and I don't remember anything about the setting, except that I liked it, but not as much as I liked the Ochs (and this was before I knew of the McKennitt).