My family had the Clancy Brothers LP with the Shoals of Herring in the sixties. We all used to love the song and were convinced that it was called The Shores Of Erin , for ages even though the title was clearly written on the LP sleeve

Alex. I once heard an Irish republican pipe band playing a tune that I took to be Dirty Old Town in Dublin's O'Connell St, which I thought was a bit odd at the time . It was in fact the tune to a rebel song about O'Connell St "the night was young and the battle over , the moon shone down O'Connell St." I assume that MacColl must have somehow taken the Dirty Old Town tune from that song , but the air itself is probably older than the twentieth century ; somebody who knew as many tunes as McColl did could have just composed the song from the music in his own head with a little variation. I've sometimes thought that The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was influenced by Blackwaterside .