I'm also looking for a more accurate rendition of this. Johnny Doyle includes a version of this, sung by his father, on his Evening Comes Early recording. I have many of the lyrics in my head, but loaned a friend the cd and he managed to lose the jacket with the lyrics on it. Here's the very approximate lyrics I am able to remember.

When I go to the market to make a purchase
I grasp my earnest money within my hand
A dark slender boy still seeks and searches
til he slipps beside me, sedate and bland.
'tis not long after, my senseless laughter
Will reach the rafters and I'm left prone
When I've paid what's owing, even though it's knowing
seven months without a shirt I am going
My money gone

is tall and festive, clever and learned, of comely mein
But he has left me and in pain bereft me
of all my fortune, sheep and kyne
Were I to travel to france ?
Or back across to Inishmore
Swift as the swallow my track he would follow
untill on the morrow I would find him there.
I'm pretty much missing the second verse and first half of the third here.


The faerie queen of ? met us out roaming
Near the ?? and she told the lad
if he would me abandon that she would grant him
a hundred ?
The slim boy answered in tones of banter
It was ne'er his fancy to lose a friend
over hill and over hollow that he would follow
a soak so mellow until the end.


Anyone fill in the gaps??