Despite this, its humour ensured a certain amount of cross-community appeal, especially in the period before the commencement of The Troubles in the late 1960s, and it has also been recorded by artists better-known for songs associated with Irish nationalism, such as The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem and The Dubliners.
The publication in Sinn Fein,[6] under the title The Magic Flute, carries no explanation but a facetious attribution to Edward Carson, the unionist politician.
This seems to have been popularised by versions by The Clancy Brothers and subsequently The Dubliners; the line is taken from the refrain (and title) of another folk song, Six Miles from Bangor to Donaghadee, describing a series of absurd episodes and also set to the tune Villikins, and which was recorded by the Larne-reared but Southport-born singer Richard Hayward, amongst others.
[7] Denis Johnston quotes the first and last verses of the song in his war memoir Nine Rivers from Jordan,[8] giving two alternate choruses: "Tooraloo!
In the 1994 adventure film The Ghost and the Darkness Val Kilmer portrays Irish Unionist hero John Henry Patterson and sings the song whilst lying in wait for a pair of man-eating lions.