In his 1993 book "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", Pete Seeger described the long genesis of this song. Apparently the folk musician Lead Belly heard Irish performer Sam Kennedy in Greenwich Village singing the traditional Irish song "Drimmin Down" aka "Drimmen Dow", about a farmer and his dead cow. (The song, in fact, is called "An droimfhionn donn dilís" ("The whitebacked brown faithful cow/calf"). It is of the type categorized as "aisling" (dream) where the country of Ireland is given form. Most times the form is that of a comely young woman but here it is the faithful handsome cow.) Lead Belly adapted the tune for his own farmer/cow song "If It Wasn't for Dicky", which he first recorded in 1937. Lead Belly did not like the lack of rhythm, which had been a part of many free-flowing Irish songs, so he made the piece more rhythmic, playing the chorus with a 12-string guitar.