Boys From Tralee

Patty Griffin

Compositor: Patty Griffin

We came across the ocean for the price on the passage
Came across the ocean for one English pound
We slept in the hay bed with the sheep and the shit, yeah
We slept in the hay, me and three boys from our town

Hunger did surround us, came on like a black sea
Everything it came for, rotten on the ground
Food was had for money, and as we had none
All the world around us came a-tumbling down

Four boys from Tralee going to a factory
In a place a foreign man called Ontario
Four boys from Tralee, forty days out on the sea
Without home or family, nowhere left to go

One morning our boy Tommy lay dying beside me
Cold and sick and dying and blue was what we found
Before he took his last breath, the ship's sailors found him
Before he took his last breath, they tossed him in to drown

If hunger makes you nothing, then, boy, I am nothing
Just another hungry boy washed up on the sand
Lucky boys who did survive the cruel deeds of cruel men
Lived a short and lonely life in a foreign land

Four boys from Tralee going to a factory
In a place a foreign man called Ontario
Four boys from Tralee, forty days out on the sea
One of them four boys was me, I wanted you to know