This is one of those great songs you never seem to hear of any more. I first heard it on an LP my brother gave me for Christmas in 1969. The LP was 'A Touch Of The Blarney' by Noel Murphy and as it was on the 'Music For Pleasure' (!) label I assume it was a couple of years old even then.

I played it again a couple of weeks ago. Murphy always seems to me to be one of those people who didn't quite get the timing right. If you listen to the record now (and that song in particular) it's as moving and as powerful and as powerful as anything I've heard by Christy Moore.

Like Christy, Murphy lived in England at the time. unlike Christy, he stayed there. By the late 60/early 70s he was probably the biggest draw on the folk circuit in England, mainly becuse of his reputation as a hilarious stand-up entertainer. I'm guessing now and I'm probably wrong but I think it would have been a lot harder for Murphy to establish himself as a purveyor of the sort of political material Christy became known for in the mid-late 70s even if he had wanted to (it's perhaps not so easy to sing about the evils of the British Army when your next-door neighbours son might be a British squaddie).

So Christy became the darling of the Left and Murphy ended up playing to an ever-decreasing audience of golfers and piss-artists who didn't wnat to hear him sing so much as see him falling about playing the pissed-up paddy until Shane McGowan came along and stole his act.

Last I heard he was living in the West Country having moved away (not before time) from the crawlers, no-marks and talentless hangers-on that had come to comprise most of what was left of the folk scene in West London and the Richmond and Twickenham area in particular (not you, Derek).

I still think he's got a great album in him somewhere. Someone ought to do something about that...