Boys From Tralee

(album: Patty Griffin - 2019)

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
The lucky boys who did survive the cruel deeds of cruel men
Would live 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