This note to the song from Daibhi O Croinin'swonderful 'The Songs of Elizabeth Croinin' - now sadly unavailable, with little chance of it ever being reprinted
Jim Carroll

The Man That Came Home From Pretoria
Text From Bess's collection of handwritten songs; I have another text, transcribed by SOC (w. i, 2 only). See also An Muscraioch II (Iuil 1992) 8.
Notes This song was composed by George Curtin (= Micheal OTuama), who was the author also of the song I'll Tell You a Comical Story [No. 71]. Dr Sean Ua Suilleabhain has kindly supplied me with the background story: George inherited some money from an aunt in Cardiff, and travelled over to collect it. However, he spent the money on drink, and found himself with nothing left to pay for his ticket home. He worked a passage on a ship coming back to Dundalk, where the ship's captain sent him to buy bread. George then made his way as far as Drogheda, where he earned £6 by singing The Youth Who Belonged to Milltown and passing round a hat! From Drogheda George then made his way to Dublin and Wicklow, and on southwards, till he returned home around Christmas 1900, when he composed the song about his supposed adventures. He pretended that he had been in Pretoria, in South Africa! The words missing in verse 6c above were supplied from Sean Ua Suilleabhain's text. Bess's version has accidentally dropped the following four lines from v. 2:

The long hours in ambush whilst dodging the Boers,
In anguish we languished while patching our sores,
For three of those chaps were a match for three score
Of the lads that came home from Pretoria.

There is a later version in CBE 1591, 224-29 (Cork i960).The text in An Muscraioch is from the singing of John Connell, of Danganasillagh.