Req: A song about a letter that got lost(answered)

Subject: Lyr Req: A song about a letter that got lost
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 01 Nov 22 - 06:14 AM

I heard this song at a singaround many years ago. I think the song is about a mum in Ireland writing to her son but she doesn't know the address... I'm not sure.
Has anyone heard of it and who wrote it?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A song about a letter that got lost
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 06 Nov 22 - 05:16 PM

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: a mother's letter to her son in the usa
From: GUEST,Alf MacLochlainn
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 07:04 PM

I wrote this song, based on a Pat-and-Mike joke told to me by a young jesuit from a jesuit college in NY, who had been introduced to me by a mutual friend, Dr. Maurice O'Connell I sang it at a party in the home of Hugh Shields, a well-known authority on folksong and a diligent collector, particularly well-known for his work on the repertoire of his principal informant, Eddie Butcher. Eddie was present at that party and when, later, a bibliographical friend of mine and Hugh's, MPPollard, was producing broadsides on an antigue printing press, she included a printing of my song in the broadside manner. Hugh gave Eddie a copy of this printed broadside and I was very flattered that Eddie chose to add it to his repertoire, even though he did not use the same air as I did. On the original broadside the song is described as 'To the air of The Rocks of Knockanure.' That is to say, half of the lines are to the air of lines in the well-known The rocks of bawn, and the other half are to lines from another well-known Irish ballad, The Valley of Knockanure.
Other singers copied the song from Eddie's published recording notably Andy Irvine and his group, using it in recording and at concerts, making a dog's dinner of some of the lines and copying Eddie's air. The song quickly grew legs and we have had the embarassing yet flattering experience of having it sung by visitors to private song-fests in our own home by people who did not know that their host for the night had composed it. Of course I never got a cent in royalties but their aren't many people can boast that they have written a song which has passed into the purest folk-tradition of anonymity and change. (Come to think of it, I did get a small fee from Beacon Press, Boston, when My Son ... was included in Christopher Cahill's Gather round me: the best of Irish popular poetry (2004).)

MY SON IN AMERIKAY sung by Andy Irvine

A long time ago in the county Mayo, this story it first began
Before this land was finally cured by the First Economical Plan
A brave young man had to leave his home and sail all over the sea
But he got well paid on the job and he stayed at the shores of Amerikay

He got on very well but he sent nothing home and his mother began to think
That may be he’d run away with a blonde or spent all his money on drink!
She wrote him a letter enquiring a news it up and sent it straight away
And upon the cover she carefully wrote “To me son in Amerikay!”

Well, the postman collected the letter she wrote and he drove in his van to Cork
Where he placed it on board on the ship at Cobh that landed it in New York
It there with the whiskey and everything else – the mailbags lay on the quay
And among the rest was a letter addressed “To my son in Amerikay”

And American postmen, I needn’t relate, they are rather like me and you
And when at last to this letter they came, they didn’t know what to do
Well they looked up all the official lists, and these had nothing to say
There was no directory could help them to find her son in Amerikay!

So it laid at the office for years and years and it made all the boys a laugh
Until one day it found some use – in the training of the staff
For every new postman that came on the job it was shown as Example A
That was “Insufficiently addressed to ‘Me Son in Amerikay'”!

But the son he got older and wiser too and one day to himself he said
“Oh, how are things going with me mother at home, and is she alive or dead?”
He walked ’round the blocks to the GPO, where he stood with his cap in his hand
“Well be any chance would there be a letter for me from me Mother in Ireland?”

“Oh Yes! Kind sir – and here it is – we’ve been waiting for you to call!
We knew that someday someone would come from Cork or even Donegal
For two hundred million that are living now in the whole of the USA
For mother in Ireland we finally found a ‘Son in Amerikay’.

Written by Alf McLoughlin

Although “My Son in Amerikay” was written by Alf McLoughlin, one-time Chief Librarian at the National Library in Dublin, Irvine learnt it from the repertoire of Eddie Butcher.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A song about a letter that got lost
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 06 Nov 22 - 05:43 PM

How wonderful to have the author of the song reply so completely!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A song about a letter that got lost
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Nov 22 - 06:49 PM

Well, the song was requested in 1997, and songwriter Alf MacLochlainn replied in 2005. That's the beauty of Mudcat - threads can go on for years.

Here's the recording by Patrick Street:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Ee9htuzeI

Subject: RE: Req: A song about a letter that got lost(answered)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Nov 22 - 07:53 PM

It's on Patrick Street's "live" album. I was at one of the concerts at which the tracks for that album were recorded (that concert was in Exeter). Who knows, the version on the album might be the one at the concert I was at!