The Galway Ghost
(Songwriter unidentified)

My name is Seamus Ryan from a farm outside Loughrea.
I always intended to live there all my days.
When I was young, ah, but twenty one, in a drunken barroom fight,
I killed a poor man, aye, and away I ran; I've been hunted day and night.

I made my way to the great U.S.A., and the sidewalks of New York.
So far away from sweet Galway, from Dublin and from Cork....
I can't go back, for the love nor the craic, to my native land again.
I'm a Yankee now, and that is how I'll remain 'til my life's end.

Another name I gave myself, ah, to lead an exile's life.
I never told another soul, and I never took a wife.
I made my way through the USA, and I roamed from coast to coast.
So all alone, I am so far from home, that they called me the Galway Ghost.

In Americay, I went astray, and I battled men and law.
With a gun and knife, I carved a life that was a tragic flaw.
In Albany I tried to flee, but a lawman got on my trail.
And he captured me and imprisoned me, and entombs me in his jail.

When I was young, aye, and on the run, from the life I left behind,
I'd rather drink than ever think of God, but now pray (prey?) on my mind,
Of the days gone by, aye, and Galway sky and the girls that loved me the most,
So raise a glass to the haunted past of poor Seamus Ryan's ghost.

This is my transcription of the Kevin Moyna recording of "The Galway Ghost": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNobF4AhxNk