I grew up with Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, and found out later that all the songs I truly loved, which I had though were *old* classics, had been written by Tommy Makem.
Later, when I first met my X2B, it was Tommy Makem's music, heavily laden with at least Liam if not several Clancy brothers, uncles and nephews (wonder why none of the sisters or the cousins or the aunts?), that brought us closest, and when many years later we wed, we honeymooned in Ireland. We didn't stay anywhere we hadn't heard them mention in a song, and even one night out of Bandon we strayed and out for Klonakilty we made our way, passing through Ballinascathy and saw the pub at which they whet their whistle in the song... and it's called the Whistle Stop. We hadn't known it was a reference, we thought it was just a metaphor... anyway.
Please tell Tommy this story. You can tell him our twins were made in Ireland, which is perfectly true!
(Don't tell him, unless you think he'd find it funny, that when we went through the CBRos home town and told people we were on a kind of Clancy Brothers tour, we got really nasty looks and comments about what terrible boys they were to be sure, never brought any of all that lovely money back home. Oops.)