"W B Yeats used part of this song in his first comedy 'A Pot of Broth', and the theme may have suggested Synge's comedie noire 'The Shadow of the Glen', in which a faithless wife goes on the road with a wandering man."

Sleevenotes, Dick Cameron, Irish Folk Songs and Ballads (Smithsonian Folkways). A short sound sample can be heard at http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/containerdetail.asp?itemid=337.

See also Songs Collected by Donagh MacDonagh

Number 5884 in the Roud Folk Song Index, where several examples are listed from Scotland and Ireland, the earliest being O Gin Ye were Dead, Gudeman in Johnson, Scots Musical Museum, V, 421 (no. 409).

In 1978, Gordeanna McCulloch recorded a short set, There's a Herrin in the Pan, which came from Jim Mahon, who had it from his grandmother in Glasgow. For further information and links to other examples, see thread There's a Herrin' in the pan, noting that I seem to have misquoted the Roud number there, and that the Traditional Ballad Index has misunderstood the term "ludgin-man"; he is not the landlord, but the lodger.