OK, here's my story. I was living in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and went to hear a group of folksingers called The Woods Tea Company at an empty American Legion hall. (They were billed as bluegrass and misc. Promoter must have figured folk music wasn't a draw.) They did Derry, and told me that it had been written in prison by Bobby Sands as a poem, and since he was held incommunicado the poem was smuggled out by a phony priest there to "hear confession." It was given to Christy Moore on the chance it would make a good tune. Moore figured it would fit the tune to Edmund Fitz and asked Gordon Lightfoot if he could use it. Moore got the OK and the rest is history.

That's such a good story I'm not sure I want to hear any other.

O'Meara