Thanks, Border and Malcolm, for responding. You've both given interesting information. Knowing how slippery the words of traditional songs can be, I'm not surprised that "car" could have been changed to "bar", especially if the singer were familiar with cock-fighting. The original might well have been "car" (I tried at least 6 ways but couldn't get the Bodleian search engine to cough up the sheets), but we need to remember that, IN THIS CASE, Frank Harte is a guest singer (if I understand the situation correctly) on Dan Milner's CD, "Irish Songs in Old New England". The words that Frank used would have come from the collection of New England songs (I can't recall the name of the collector) from which Dan selected the songs for the CD. If that assumption is correct, then the song is not originally Frank's but rather from a book in a New England library. (And I would be glad to be corrected by Dan, or anyone else, if this is not correct.)

David