I got this neat little story from one of my favourite magazines: The Folklife Centre News, put out by the American Folklife Centre in The Library of Congress. It's a great article and I'll just summarize it for you. here goes:

Todd Harvey, a well qualified young man with an interest in Bob Dylan wants to find out the poop on Dylan's "With God On Our Side". He goes to The American Folklife Centre's reading room. In a very condensed nutshell here's what happened.

It's old news that Dylan STOLE Domenic Behan's tune which he wrote for his song "The Patriot Game". Hell, Behan complained about the theft for many years.

With some suggestions from the great songfinder Joe Hickerson, Todd discovers that:

Burl Ives RECORDED a version of The Nightingale, using exactly the same tune claimed by Behan......in 1952, and toured Britain, long before "Patriot Game" was written.

Case closed? Not so.

JO STAFFORD (American Pop singer) recorded the VERY SAME SONG in 1948!

So Bobby was just one of a number of "borrowers", and Domenic? Hmmmmmmm.

Great article, Great Magazine. Thank you Joe H. for puttin' me on the mailing list!

Rick