Got another e-mail on this subject today:
-Joe Offer

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Dear Joe Offer:
As I was, I believe, the person who originally informed others on our Jewish Music list that Richard Farina had borrowed this Sephardic melody for his Swallow Song, I've been following the discussion on _your_ list with interest. I thought you might like to share with your list that I wrote Mimi Farina asking if she had any idea how her husband had learned the Sephardic melody; she didn't know, but felt certain "he'd picked it up when he was in Spain. He traveled through Spain during the summer of 1963--seeking the ghost of Hemingway, I'm sure."

Regarding another of Richard's "borrowings" (or, as Woody Guthrie and others would have called them, thefts), in this case for "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" (from an Irish song), Mimi wrote, charmingly, I guess: "Dick Farina had a way of plagiarizing that was not only bold, but also endearingly forgivable."

I *did* find that cute, though I imagine you'd have to ask the plagiarees to determine if it was forgivable ...

Just what *is* the nature of your list, anyway?

W/ all best wishes--Robert Cohen