Hi,

Good one Lighter- there's an obscure broadside called Irish Boy's Lamentation the also has "O Home, O home" but that's the reason it's obscure.

Here's one and the earliest extant broadside of "The Queen of Hearts" by Pitts (Printer) Wholesale Toy and Marble warehouse 6, Great St. Andrew street, 7 Dials, London. The broadside is identified by the 2nd stanza. It's ending (stanzas 7 and 8) is similar to, or a rewrite of B, The Cruel Father, where her lover is sent to sea and killed by a cannonball. Some of the intermediate stanzas as pointed out by Steve are found in Elizabeth St. Clair's "Irish Boy."


The Queen of Hearts- broadside by Pitts (Printer) of 7 Dials, London about 1820.

1. O my poor heart my poor heart is breaking
For a false young man I'm quite mistaken
He is gone to Ireland long time to tarry,
Some Irish girl I am afraid he will marry.

2. The Queen of Hearts and the Ace of sorrow,
He is here today and gone tomorrow
Young men are plenty sweethearts few
But if my love leaves me what shall I do.

3. When he comes in I gaze all around him
When he goes out my poor heart goes with him
To meet is a pleasure to part is a sorrow,
He is here today and gone tomorrow.

4. I wish I was upon yonder mountain
Where gold and silver I could have for counting
I could not count it for thinking upon him
He is nothing to me what makes me love him

5. I love my father I love my mother,
I love my sister and likewise my brother
I love my friends and relations too,
I will forsake them all and follow you

6. O Billy O Billy I love you well,
I love you better than tongue can tell
I love you dearly and dare not show it
You do the same and no one shall know it

7. But when her father came to hear
That he was courting his daughter dear
He had him pressed and sent to sea
To keep him from her sweet company

8. He had not been there years passing three
On board the ship called the Victory
It was his misfortune there for to fall
And killed he was by cannon ball.

Richie