I'm still working on the question of how Fariña got the tune. Somebody told me last night that Carolyn Hester told him that Fariña had been familiar with the song "Los Bilbilicos," but didn't know the meaning of the words - but it seems funny that a guy with a tilde in his surname wouldn't know at least a bit of Spanish, which is pretty darn close to Ladino (although "bilbilicos" is not in my Spanish dictionary). I believe that Fariña was still married to Hester when Hester recorded the song as "Los Bibilicos" in 1962.

Hester sings these lyrics, which are exactly what I found in a 1960 songbook by Theodore Bikel called "Folksongs and Footnotes":

LOS BIBILICOS

Los bibilicos cantan / En los arbos de la flor
Los bibilicos cantan / En los arbos de la flor
Debaxo se asentan / Los que sufren del amor.
Debaxo se asentan / Los que sufren del amor.

Bikel translates it:

The nightbirds are singing
In the flowering trees,
While underneath sit those
That suffer from love.

-Joe Offer (I guess you caught me talking to myself again)-

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Sing Out! Magazine published "The Swallow Song" in its last issue in 1966 (Vol 16, #3), but my library's collection begins in January, 1967. If somebody has that magazine and could look it up for us, I'd sure appreciate it.