"Jim, do you remember hearing any cowboy songs from Travellers?"
Not cowboy songs as such - plenty of modern Country and Western from the youngsters
Mary's version is interesting as it is very much her own somewhat confuse rendition
Knocklong is a reference to a rebel song entitled 'The Station of Knocklong' (in Limerick, not too far from the Limerick/Tipperary Border - the scene of a song about an ambush durig the War of independence - The Station of Knocklong')
Mary's life would furnish the a plot for a Dostoyevsky novel; she was blind from birth and brought up her sixteen children on the road, for part of her life, without a husband.
She loved singing and sucked up songs like a vacuum cleaner - entirely orally
She had a large repertoire which she usually remembered on request, but each time the songs came out slightly differently
When she chose to leave the road and into a squalid council flat in Hackney, our visits to her were like sitting next to an emotional volcano - she poured all her misery, anger and (for that period) loneliness into each song - on numerous times she broke down emotionally when she sang (she also fell about laughing at her comic songs)
A truly creative singer.
Listen to her 'Buried in Kilkenny' if it's on the web - I'm pretty sure that was recorded when she was in Hackney.

The was one of those who discriminated between her different types of song
The called those we would refer to as 'folk' as, "me daddy's songs" (when we recorded him he only knew six, mainly fragments) - she was talking about a type of song rather than actual songs.
She could have doubled her repertoire with her C and W songs, but she refued
She told us, "They're not the ones we're talking about - I only remember them 'cause that's what tha lads ask for in the pub"
Shwe was from Cashel, in Tipperary, by the way.

Now look what you've done - you've got me started
Jim