the melody to back home in derry is hundreds of years old and has a b part and a chorus, which are not in the wreck.

lightfoot may have borrowed the main melody but it's isn't exactly a complicated or unusual one so it's just as likely he co-discovered it. there are nmany old irish and scottish ballad melodies that keep turning up.

when lightfoot was young he was in a toronto irish band which did did quite a bit of traditional ballad music so maybe he got it there ., or just got the feel there, in any case it seems quite within folk tradition to me. can anyone count how many folk melodies woody guthrie borrowed, or dylan for that matter.goodnight irene has been rewritten so many times it amazes me