He subsequently sought Liam’s feedback on his version.

Brennan on the Moor, which was inspired by the Cork highwayman Willie Brennan, became Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie. He even borrowed an old tune regularly performed by the Clancy Brothers and reworked it to suit his own ends. Inspired by what he was hearing, he started to write rebellious songs, but rooted in the American experience. “All through the night, they would sing drinking songs, country ballads and rousing rebel songs that would lift the roof.” Later, in the first (and as yet only) volume of his autobiography, Chronicles, he recounted the effect that Liam Clancy had on him: “I got to be friends with Liam and began going after-hours to the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, which was mainly an Irish bar frequented mostly by guys from the old country,” he said.

His passage across the Atlantic was made possible by the fact that Bobby had returned home to look after the family business. The actor Cyril Cusack urged him to dispense with William, because it sounded too English, and to use his Irish name, Liam, instead. There, on the banks of the Suir, she met their mother, Johanna, and their younger brother William - the 11th of 11 children - and it was on her recommendation that he made the trip to America to try his hand at show business. Guggenheim was so struck by their story that she travelled to Ireland to capture a sense of their origins. The mining heiress was passionate about the preservation of traditional songs and she immediately connected with the Clancys and the way their singing brought ancient compositions to life. It was in New York in the middle years of the 1950s that they first attracted the attention of Diane Guggenheim. Paddy, Tom and Bobby Clancy had hit the ground running in America, and after a stint acting on and off Broadway, they were becoming a fixture on the burgeoning folk scene on the east coast.

Clancy brothers when the ship comes in