The song is hundreds of years old. When did it ever have "the full" set of lyrics? Verses come and go, over time. They are mixed and matched.

Having said that, I found these lyrics with the phrase in question:

Oh! List to the lay of a poor Irish Harper
And scorn not the strains of his old withered hand,
But remember those fingers they could once move more sharper
To raise the merry strains of his dear native land.

It was long before the shamrock, our green isle's loved emblem,
Was crushed in it's beauty 'neath the Saxon Lion's Paw
I was called by the colleens of the village and the valley
Bold Phelim Brady the Bard Of Armagh.

How I long for to muse on the days of my boyhood,
Though four score and three years has flitted since then,
Still it gives sweet reflections, as every young joy should,
That the merry-hearted boys make the best of old men.

At a pattern or a fair I could twist my shillegagh
Or trip through a jig with my brogues bound with straw,
Whilst all the pretty maidens around me assembled loved
Bold Phelim Brady the Bard of Armagh.

Although I have traveled this wide world over,
Yet Eire's my Home and a parent to me,
Then, oh, Let the ground that my old bones shall cover
Be cut from the soil that is trod by the free.

And when Sergeant Death in his cold arms shall embrace me,
O, lull me to sleep with sweet Erin go bragh,
By the side of my Kathleen, my young wife, O place me, then
Forget Phelim Brady the Bard of Armagh.