On Tim Dennehy's website, Seán is quoted as follows:

In a note to me shortly before his death Seán Ó Síocháin rightly claimed to have popularised it on radio: "It was my good fortune in the early fifties to get to know and admire Sigerson through our role in the very popular Radio Éireann programme, 'The Ballad Makers' Saturday Night'. I take pardonable pride in the fact that it was my good fortune to have been selected to sing, 'The Boys of Barr na Sráide', which was requested again and again and which was acknowledged as being the most popular song of the series".