A Friend Of Mine." First he explained, "I learned this song from Eric von Schmidt, who learned it from DYLAN, who learned it from ME" and then went on to say that each had added and changed the song to suit his own inclination until really neither of them could make claim to it's original authorship. "About 20 years ago," he said, "we finally all got together to try to figure out where the song started," Dave, Bob, Eric and a bottle of rum. Half way through the bottle they came to a vote to split the royalties for the song three ways. "It was a democratic vote... two to one" On his 1995 CD release, "Dave Van Ronk, From Another Time And Place" he credits two tracks to Dylan: "The Old Man" and "He Was A Friend Of Mine." All of the "thieving Dylan" rumors really tick me off. None of them seem to have any real facts or evidence behind them. Like this one for example, Dylan never recorded "He Was a Friend of Mine" so it would be totally pointless for him to go through the trouble of paying off some guy that he stole the song from. I think that these Dylan rumors are esentially the same as the claim that Shakespeare didn't exist in that people find it hard to believe that two seemingly average people could write so well so stories are created to make these figures more believable. That's just my take on