The Dubliners of 2018, Seán Cannon is the only former member still in this group, following Eamonn Campbell's death in October 2017. The Dubliners, initially known as "The Ronnie Drew Ballad Group", formed in 1962 and made a name for themselves playing regularly in O'Donoghue's Pub in Dublin. The change of name came about because of Ronnie Drew's unhappiness with it, together with the fact that Luke Kelly was reading "Dubliners" by James Joyce at the time. Founding members were Drew, Kelly, Ciarán Bourke and Barney McKenna. Drew, McKenna and Thomas Whelan had originally teamed up for a fundraising concert and then
Whiskey in the Jar the Bar" in a mid-1850s broadsheet. The song collector Colm Ó Lochlainn, in his book Irish Street Ballads, described how his mother learnt "Whiskey in the Jar" in Limerick in 1870 from a man called Buckley who came from Cork. When O Lochlainn included the song in Irish Street Ballads, he wrote down the lyrics from memory as he had learnt them from his mother. He called the song "There's Whiskey in the Jar", and the lyrics are virtually identical to the version that was used by Irish bands in the 1960s such as the Dubliners. The O Lochlainn version