"The singer said his version came from America."
The singer said he learned the song from his sister, who moved to America
She went there with an established local repertoire
This becomes a little tiresome Karen, it seems you are contradicting facts in order to ride a personal hobby horse - not rare in this area where we are regularly told what we don?t know about our local musical traditions
You've gone though the lot, from folk magazines to "learned from the radio"
Maybe it's time to send in the missionaries
We befriended Tom and for over twenty years got to know him and his songs quite well.
If there are two things I've learned about folk songs over the last half century of involvement it?s how little any of us know about the subject and how much we have missed.
We had exactly the same thing from academic desk-jockeys claiming the non-literate Traveller; John Reilly must have had access to literacy to know the ballads he knew - because his repertoire didn't fit the latest pet theory circulating around the academic ivory towers
Jim Carroll