One heavenly night in last November, Pat walked out for to see his love, What night it was I don’t remember, but the moon shone brightly from above, That day the boy got some liquor, which made his spirits brisk and gay, Saying, “What is the use of walking any quicker for I know she’ll meet me on the way.”
Whack fol loora loora loddy, whack fol right fol lie doe day.
He tunes his pipe and fell to humming, while gently onward he did jog, But fatigue and whisky overcome him, so Pat lay down upon the sod, He was not long without a comrade, and one that could kick up the hay, For the big jackass he smelt out Paddy, lay down beside him on the way.
He hugged, he smugged this hairy old devil, and threw his hat to worldly cares, “You’ve come at last, my Biddy darling, but, by me soul, you’re like a bear.” He laid his hand on the donkey’s nose, just then this beast began to bray, Pat jumped up and roared out “Murder! Who served me in such a way?”
He took two legs and homeward started, at railroad speed, as fast, I’m sure, He never stopped his feet or halted until he came to Biddy’s door, When he got there ’twas almost morning, down on his knees he fell to pray, Saying, “Let me in my Biddy darling, I’ve met the Devil on the way.”
He told his story mighty civil, while she prepared the whiskey glass, How he hugged, he smugged, this hairy old devil, “Go way” says she “that’s Doran’s ass!” “I know it was, my Biddy darling.” And they got married the very next day, Pat never got back the old straw hat, that the donkey ate up on the way.
We have another comic song this month that was once sung across the north woods region including here in Minnesota where a version was printed by Mike Dean in his 1922 songster The Flying Cloud. Lumberjack singer Charley Bowlen of Black River Falls, Wisconsin also sang a version for collector Helene Stratman-Thomas in 1940. In Ireland, it was printed by Colm Ó Lochlainn in his influential collection Irish Street Ballads.
The melody above is my transcription of a version recorded in the western Catskills by collector Herbert Halpert in 1941. The singer was Walter Wormuth of Peakville, New York who had himself worked in the lumber woods earlier in life. Most versions use a variant of the melody associated with the song “Spanish Lady” and Wormuth’s has a unique twist on that well-worn tune. The above text is primarily Wormuth’s but I borrowed a few lines from Dean and Bowlen here and there.
With the Sign of the Cross on my forehead, as I kneel on this cold dungeon floor, As I kneel at your feet, reverend father, with no one but God to the fore, I have told you the faults of my boyhood—the follies and sins of my youth, And it’s now from this crime of my manhood I speak with the same open truth.
You see, sir, the land was our people’s for ninety long years, and their toil, What first was a bare bit of mountain brought into good wheat-bearing soil, ’Twas their hands rose the walls of our cabin, where our children were borned and bred, Where our wedding’s an’ christening’s was merry, where we weeped and keened over our dead.
We were honest and fair to the landlord-we paid him the rent to the day, And it wasn’t our fault if our hard sweat they squandered and wasted away, In the cards, and the dice, and the racecourse, and often in deeper disgrace, That no tongue could relate without bringing a blush to an honest man’s face.
But the day come at last that they worked for, when the castles, the mansions and lands, They should hold but in trust for the people, ’til their shame passed away from their hands, And our place, sir, too, went to auction–by many the acres were sought, And what cared the stranger that purchased, who made him the good soil he bought?
The old folks were gone—thank God for it—where troubles or cares can’t pursue, But the wife and the children—Oh Father in Heaven—what was I to do? Sure I thought, I’ll go speak to the new man, and tell him of me and of mine, And the trifle that I’ve put together I’ll place in his hand as a fine.
The estate is worth six times the money, and maybe his heart isn’t cold, But the scoundrel that bought the thief’s penny-worth was worse than the pauper that sold.
Well I chased him to house and to office, wherever I thought he’d be met, And I offered him all he’d put on it—but no, ’twas the land he should get, I prayed as men only to God pray—my prayers they were spurned and denied, And no matter how just my right was, when he had the law at his side.
I was young, and but few years was married to one with a voice like a bird, When she sang the songs of our country, every feeling within me was stirred, Oh I see her this minute before me, with a foot wouldn’t bend a croneen, And her laughing eyes lifted to kiss me—my charming, my bright-eyed Eileen!
’Twas often with pride that I watched her, her soft arms folding our boy, Until he chased the smile from her red lip, and silenced the song of her joy, Whisht, father, have patience a minute, let me wipe the big drops from my brow, Whisht, father, I’ll try not to curse him; but I tell you, don’t preach to me now.
Well, he threatened, he coaxed, he ejected; for we tried to cling to the place, That was mine, yes, far more than ’twas his, sir; I told him so up to his face, But the little I had melted from me in making the fight for my own, And a beggar, with three helpless children, out on the wide world I was thrown.
And Eileen would soon have another—another that never drew breath, The neighbors were good to us always—but what could they do against death? For my wife and her infant before me lay dead, and by him they were killed, As sure as I’m kneeling before you, to own to my share of the guilt.
Well I laughed all consoling to scorn, I didn’t mind much what I said, With Eileen a corpse in the barn, with a bundle of straw for a bed, Sure the blood in my veins boiled to madness—do you think that a man is a log? Well I tracked him once more—’twas the last time—and shot him that night like a dog.
Yes, I shot him, I did it, but father, let them that makes laws for the land, Look to it, when they come to judgment, for the blood that lies red on my hand, If I drew the piece, ’twas them primed it, that left him stretched cold on the sod, And from their bar, where I got my sentence, I appeal to the bar of my God.
For the justice I never got from them, the right in their hands is unknown, Still I say sir, at last, that I’m sorry I took the law into my own, That I stole out that night in the darkness, whilst mad with my grief and despair, And I drew the black soul from his body, not giving him time for a prayer.
Well, it is told, sir you have the whole story, God forgive him and me for our sins, My life now is ended—oh father, for the young ones, for them life begins, You’ll look to poor Eileen’s young orphans? God bless you and now I’m at rest, And resigned to the death that tomorrow is staring me straight in the face.
This incredibly grim and moving song depicting an Irish tenant farmer confessing to the murder of his landlord appeared as a poem in an 1886 edition of Minneapolis’ Irish Standard newspaper. It was written by a Cork woman, Katharine Murphy, who published it in Ireland under a pseudonym in the nationalist newspaper The Nation ten years prior. The only known sung version of the poem is one collected in Beaver Island, Michigan from Andrew “Mary Ellen” Gallagher by Alan Lomax (listen to first part here and second part here). Above, I have transcribed Gallagher’s version and filled in some stanzas using the Irish Standard. For more information on this remarkable song including the Irish Standard excerpt and the Gallagher recording, see this post in the “Caught My Ear” blog by the American Folklife Center’s Stephen Winick.
Paddy McCarthy, a sweet Irish lad, he came from the county of Ballinafad, Where he spent his young days until man he had grown, he come to this country a few years ago, Where he settled him down quite neatly, faith good luck attended him greatly, The one thing that vexed him completely, was the want of a cow to give milk.
So then he consulted his wife Peggy Ann, a nice little girl from the County Cavan, She said that her milk she must have anyhow, so Paudie went out for to buy her a cow, To buy one he struck out so gaily, twirling his blackthorn shillelagh, ’Til he met with old farmer Bailey, a Protestant Yankee so cute.
They haggled around and a bargain soon made, the price of the cow to the farmer Pat paid, Singing along the way sir as he drove home his newly bought cow.
He arrived at the gate, Peggy Ann at the door, such an elegant creature she’d ne’er seen before, “Where did you get her?” said Peggy so gaily, “To see sure I bought her from old farmer Bailey.” “From that Protestant thief? Blood and thunder! Oh Pat she’s a Protestant cow!”
“[ ] never mind that, go into the house and mind what you’re at, A bottle of holy water bring out to me now, and I will soon make her a Catholic cow” A bottle of blue liquor she brought out instead, so Pat began pouring it on the cow’s head, Making the sign of the cross as he poured, all in a sudden the cow let a roar.
They looked at each other with faces so blue, thinking that she was a Protestant cow, Says Pat “There must be something wrong in her. Or isn’t the Protestant strong in her,” “Musha may the Devil go on with her! Pat she’s a protestant cow.”
Searching the many online archives of American newspapers from the 1800s turns up dozens of printings and reprintings of versions of this humorous story about Pat and Peggy Ann and their attempt to convert their new cow to Catholicism. However, I can find none that tell the story in verse. Interestingly, an Irish telling of the story turns up in Ireland’s recently digitized National Folklore Collection as recounted by a school boy in Collooney, Co. Sligo–just up the road from Ballinafad.
Two sung versions were collected in Beaver Island, Michigan by Alan Lomax and Ivan Walton from brothers Barney and James Martin in 1938 and 1940. You can hear Barney’s version (my main source for the above transcription) on the Library of Congress website. James Martin said he brought the song to Beaver Island from a lumber camp in Schoolcraft County on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where a Canadian lumberjack named Campbell sang it around 1890.
