Just a belated reply to Jim - I sang this at a singaround last night, and was struck once again by (as Jim says) its "mixture of despair and hope".

"The landlords and their agents,
The bailiffs and their beagles
The land of our forefathers we are forced to give o'er"

The quiet brutality of that reference to people being, literally, hounded out of their homes always gets to me - and the contrast with the way the song moves on to the hope-against-hope of being "happy as Queen Victoria" once the singer reaches America.

Incidentally, I sang it in response to Zoe Mulford's self-written song on the same subject, American Wake, which I can recommend - it's a superficially cheerful, upbeat song with some very dark depths.