Christy Moore, in his book "One voice: My Life in Song" does indeed note that his version of this song is "from the singing of Hamish Imlach". He the following to say (along with some comments about Hamish Imlach himself):

"Once, I was standing in the queue outside the MSG [Manchester Sports Guild Folk Club] to hear Hamish Imlach. He walked down the street and, seeing me with a guitar case, he stopped to chat and then invited me in as his guest. It was the beginning of a long friendship that lasted until he died in the first minutes of 1996...

"This song was a mainstay of Hamish's set and I only started doing it when I returned to Ireland and off his patch. In recent years it has become part of the national repertoire. There is another fine version I heard sung by the late Lian Weldon. The words are quite similar but Liam's melody was a lot more dramatic and may have been based on a slow air of the same name that I heard Willie Clancy play on the pipes."