Erin’s lovely home, song
Mary Ellen Butcher, singing in English
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Lyrics
You Patron sons of Paddy’s land, come listen unto me,
Communicate till I relate this mournful tragedy,
For the want of trade has thousands made all anxious they might roam
To leave the land where we were reared called Erin’s lovely home.
2
[My father was a farming man reared to industry,
He had two sons, they were man big, and loving daughters three;|
Our land was small to serve us all, some of us had to roam
To leave the land where we were reared called Erin’s lovely home.]
3
My father sold his second cow and borrowed twenty pound,
All in the merry month of May we sailed from Derry quay;
There were thousands more along the shore all anxious they might roam
To leave the land where we were reared called Erin’s lovely home.
4
We were scarcely seven days sailing when a fever plagued our crew,
They were falling like the autumn leaves, bidding friends and lives adieu;
We raised a prayer to heaven: alas that ever we did roam
To leave the land where we were reared called Erin’s lovely home.
5
Alas, my sister she fell sick, her life it was taken away,
It grieved me ten times more to see her body thrown in the deep;
Down in the deep her body lies and it rolls in a terrible foam
Her friends may mourn but she’ll ne’er return to Erin’s lovely home.
Notes
This song is distinct from a well-known broadside ballad with the same title: Shields7 p. 47–8. It was not printed on broadsides, nor has any more recent printed text come to my notice. Yet is seems to have enjoyed a wide usage, in Ireland at least. In Dublin in 1966 Frank Harte asked Eddie Butcher if he could sing it and Eddie provided one verse. In Limavady soon after, Eddie elicited a full version from his brother Jimmy. Three years later, Mary Ellen told me that it was from her uncle Jimmy that she had learnt her version, which is given here with an extra verse (2) from her uncle. Dating no doubt from the post-Famine period, the song recalls one of the most serious hazards to which emigrants were exposed: sickness during the voyage.
