"The Auld Triangle" is a song by Dick Shannon, often attributed to Brendan Behan, who made it famous when he included it in his 1954 play The Quare Fellow. He first performed it publicly in 1952 on the RTÉ radio programme 'The Ballad Maker's Saturday Night', produced by Mícheál Ó hAodha. Behan's biographer, Michael O'Sullivan, recorded, 'It has been believed for many years that Brendan wrote that famous prison song but Mícheál Ó hAodha says he never laid claim to authorship. Indeed he asked him to send a copyright to another Dubliner, Dick Shannon.' When he recorded the song for Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folksongs and Ballads, Behan introduced it with these words: 'This song was written by a person who will never hear it recorded, because he's not in possession of a gramophone. He's ... he's ... pretty much of a tramp.'

Brendan Francis Aidan Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican, an activist who wrote in both English and Irish. His widely acknowledged alcohol dependence, despite attempts to treat it, impacted his creative capacities and contributed to health and social problems which curtailed his artistic output and finally his life. In 2023 reports emerged of his allegedly sexually violent behaviour against a young New York publicist, Letty Cottin Pogrebin in the early 1960s.