I was listening to his version of A Farmer's Boy yesterday, and it was clearly related to the familiar English tune but there were differences as well. At first I put that down to age - he was almost 90 when he recorded it, and it might have been more than 60 years since he had last sung it. However, I soon realized there was nothing faulty in his memory. He was singing it the way head learned it from his Irish friends in South March, as an Irish modal variant of an English tune. Listening to that album is like your own personal telephone line to the 1880's. It's also fascinating to hear how Irish this transplanted Englishman sounds.