THE SALT (Malcolm Bray; originally learned from Francis Brolly [also here]

Come all you romantic young fellows who think for to work on a farm,
Come listen a while to my story; it may serve to keep you from harm:

When I was a smashing young fellow, my age it was just seventeen,
I hired myself to a farmer at the horse fair at Ballinascreen.

His family was way up in the mountains in among heather and bog,
And the stock that I had to look after was a donkey, a goat and a dog.

The master turned out an old skinflint; his heart was as hard as a stone.
He worked me from daylight to darkness: in a month I was just skin and bone.

We never ate nothing but porridge: he said it would make me a man.
It very near made me a dead one; we supped it straight out of the pan.

The master and me and his mother, we lived in a tumble-down shack
The old woman was well over ninety: her bones were beginning to crack.

She sat on a chair by the fire, she never would go to her bed,
And when I arose every morning, she was sitting there nodding her head.

We had three old hens and a rooster, one day they all died from the croup;
He plucked them and boiled them salted them, lived for a week on the soup.

Misfortunes may never come single for then the old nanny-goat died,
He skinned her and boiled her and salted her; made himself shoes from the hide;

I thought that his mind was affected, I thought that his mind was insane;
Poor Fido he died from distemper - I was sent for the salt once again.

When I saw what happened the dog not a wink did I sleep all that night,
And when I arose the next morning I got the most terrible fright

The old woman was lying by the fire as I raced for the door he cried «Halt!»
Saying «Where are you going so early? Come back here and fetch me the salt»

I went out through the door like a rocket, down the mountain I ran like a hare
I never stopped running for a fortnight and I never been since at a fair!