From Gather Round Me: The Best of Irish Popular Poetry by Christopher Cahill (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), page 31—but see my footnote.


THE EMIGRANT'S LETTER
Percy French

Dear Danny,
I'm takin' the pen in me hand,
To tell you we're just out o' sight o' the land;
In the grand Allan liner we're sailin' in style,
But we're sailin' away from the Emerald Isle;
And a long sort o' sigh seemed to rise from us all
As the waves hid the last bit of ould Donegal.
Och! it's well to be you that is takin' yer tay
Where they're cuttin' the corn in Creeshla the day.

I spoke to the captain—he won't turn her round,
And if I swum back I'd be apt to be drowned,
So here I must stay—oh! I've no cause to fret,
For their dinner was what you might call a banquet.
But though it is 'sumpchus,' I'd swop the whole lot,
For the ould wooden spoon and the stirabout pot;
And sweet Katty Farrell a-wettin' the tay
Where they're cuttin' the corn in Creeshla the day!

There's a woman on board who knows Katey by sight,
So we talked of old times 'til they put out the light.
I'm to meet the good woman tomorra' on deck,
And we'll talk about Katey from here to Quebec.
I know I'm no match for her – oh! not the leesht,
With her house and two cows and her brother a preesht.
But the woman declares Katey's heart's on the say
And mine's back with Katey in Creeshla the day.*

If Katey is courted by Patsey or Mick,
Put a word in for me with a lump of a stick,
Don't kill Patsey outright, he has no sort of chance,
But Mickey's a rogue you might murder at wance;
For Katey might think as the longer she waits
A boy in the hand is worth two in the States:
And she'll promise to honour, to love and obey
Some robber that's roamin' round Creeshla the day.

Good-bye to you Dan, there's no more to be said,
And I think the salt wather's got into me head,
For it dreeps from me eyes when I call to me mind,
The friends and the colleen I'm leavin' behind;
Oh, Danny, she'll wait; whin I bid her good-bye,
There was just the laste taste of a tear in her eye,
And a break in her voice whin she said "You might stay,
But plaze God you'll come back to ould Creeshla some day."


* This verse is given in Ireland: The Songs, Book 4 by Mel Bay Publications Inc (1995), page 42, but it's not in any other book that I've been able to find. I suspect it's a "folk" accretion to French's original. The rest of the lyrics have the look of being taken down from someone's singing.

The Mel Bay book also gives the music and chords.