There's a Welsh version too, "Swansea Town" it's on Stan Hugill's record "Shanties from the Seven Seas", with me in the chorus somewhere.

Stan Hugill's book "Sailortown" (1967), about all the ports in the world in the years of sail has a section about the Holy Ground, in Cork, or as it was then known, Queenstown (where incidentally the Titanic last stopped to take on passengers - the listy of steerage passengers from there on a website somewhere makes curious reading..

"When the men got ashore here they would head for a rather squalid part of the port known as the Holy Ground where there were many taverns and the fishermen and wtaerfront workers of Cobh had their being. Some say that, as well as this curious name being the name of the district, indays gone by it was also the nickname of the brothel quarter of Queenstown."