Allen,

There was a smilie at the end of 'Guest's' post. I think he may have known this already. Dirty Old Town was recorded by the Dubliners (and many other copy-cat bands since) and became popular in Ireland. It is therefore a song popular in Ireland but NOT obviously an Irish song.

In the 60s a number of very influential Irish singers (especially Luke Kelly and Christy Moore) spent a lot of time around the Folk clubs in England. They then came home and brought the material they had learned over there with them. Both Luke and Christy became involved in highly succesful groups which combined a mixture of these songs with some Irish Traditional songs and dance tunes. (In the unlikely event there'd be anyone on this forum who wouldn't know these were The Dubliners and Planxty). These were Irish groups singing with an Irish accent. They never made any secret of the fact that many of the songs they sang were English or Scotish, but not everyone listens to or remebers the song intros or reads the liner notes or song credits on an album or CD.

Then people (like Guest,Ray) who assume they are Irish put them out on an album called Popoular Irish Songs or into a song book (many Irish song books are compiled and published by people who are not Irish) and the assumption is promulgated to another set of people, some of whom assume its Irish, others don't know or care.

While I'm all for the proper accreditation of material to its rightful author or tradition at either a professional or acedemic, the vast majority of people out there don't give a Monkeys where the song is from. And for most practical purposes they're right not to.