Boys from Tralee

Song Boys from Tralee
Artist Patty Griffin
Album Patty Griffin

Lyrics

[00:19.45] We came across the ocean for the price on the passage
[00:24.53] Came across the ocean for one English pound
[00:29.19] We slept in the hay bed with the sheep and the shit, yeah
[00:33.77] We slept in the hay, me and three boys from our town
[00:38.44]
[00:56.10] Hunger did surround us, came on like a black sea
[01:00.77] Everything it came for, rotten on the ground
[01:05.38] Food was had for money, and as we had none
[01:10.00] All the world around us came a-tumbling down
[01:14.54]
[01:23.28] Four boys from Tralee going to a factory
[01:28.20] In a place a foreign man called Ontario
[01:32.98] Four boys from Tralee, forty days out on the sea
[01:37.22] Without home or family, nowhere left to go
[01:47.22]
[02:04.95] One morning our boy Tommy lay dying beside me
[02:09.60] Cold and sick and dying and blue was what we found
[02:14.28] Before he took his last breath, the ship's sailors found him
[02:18.69] Before he took his last breath, they tossed him in to drown
[02:23.52]
[02:41.00] If hunger makes you nothing, then, boy, I am nothing
[02:45.60] Just another hungry boy washed up on the sand
[02:50.24] Lucky boys who did survive the cruel deeds of cruel men
[02:54.82] Lived a short and lonely life in a foreign land
[03:00.30]
[03:08.18] Four boys from Tralee going to a factory
[03:12.89] In a place a foreign man called Ontario
[03:17.60] Four boys from Tralee, forty days out on the sea
[03:22.11] One of them four boys was me, I wanted you to know