Boys From Tralee

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