let's face it "Isle of hope, isle of tears" is not really a folk song or even a song in the folk tradition. It is a commercial pop song written to appeal to a specific audience and to make money for the writer.

The song is written to appeal to a Bing Crosby phony Irish audience from Yankland who can sing it as they cry in their beer. The 3 month shy of 18yo ?ine Moore travelling with her 15yo and 11yo brothers to join her resident parents in New York is changed into a 13yo brave little match girl travelling in a coffin ship across the Atlantic to escape a famine that had ended 60 years earlier.

This woman was not travelling to "America" which is a continent but to the USA which is less than 1/3 of that continent. She was leaving a land just as free and much more civilised than the land she was going to and she would face just as much fear, teas, and loss of liberty in her new land as the land she left. As proof of this she dies at 50 and left 11 children behind.

There really is a folk song in ?ine's story but not the one that would sell to the plaghmas Irish myth lovers or that appeal to the YankEireanach. You won't find historical reality in this song - it might spoil it for the Yank mythology lovers the song is aimed at to make it a commercial success.