Thread not dead...I note that in Sandberg the (minor key) arrangement is credited to AGW, who from his notes I take to be Alfred George Wathall. So there's that.


I'll observe that Dylan's interpretation is unique, and in my opinion the most "desolate and poignant" of all to use Sandberg's description of the tune he collected.

I figured Dylan's version might be the same as Van Ronk's, both being recorded around the same time but it's not. Dylan makes three unique changes:

First, Dylan in the first verse does not set up his still to make a few dollars, he sits by it to drink by himelf:

"I go to some hollow,
And sit at my still
And if whiskey dont kill me,
Then I dont know what will,"

In the second, there's no grocery:

"I go to some bar room,
And drink with my friends,
Where the women cant follow,
And see what I spend....,"

In the third, rather being assertively drinking when he's dry, Dylan is plaintive:

"Let me eat when I am hungry,
Let me drink when I am dry,
A dollar when I am hard up,
Religion when I die,
The whole world's a bottle,
And life's but a dram,
When the bottle gets empty,
It sure ain't worth a damn."

Rolf Cahn's 1959 had the "World is a bottle" line which I love (first that I find it) but I find the other changes Dylan makes really do take the song a long long way away from the jaunty Irish versions, and it's Dylan's I can't get out of my head.