Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home

Subject: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Apr 20 - 10:44 PM

Here's the recording - anybody got lyrics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oJQZxh6Os8

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: cnd
Date: 29 Apr 20 - 11:05 PM

Transcribed from your video. Had a bit of trouble with one word towards the end.

It's a hell of an age, puts a man ill-at-ease
Sets his mind in a rage, makes him weak at the knees
When he sees things are changing and he's marking time
His work-mates all twenty, and he's past his prime
And he longs to go back home to Ireland
I've heard he's tired of the crack and the living is rough
And his twenty one years on the buildings have taught him
When you have got nothing then you've had enough

So he sits in the bar and he smokes his cigar
And he boasts how he's never alone
Ah, but I know he's lying, his big heart is breaking
Murphy can never go home

And he reads in the paper of the economic miracles
Brought by the Yanks and the men from Japan
Building the blocks of the 21st Century
What use have they for a laboring man
Once hard men were heroes but now they are fools
And all the old values, uprooted and gone
And when he woke up he found they had changed all the rules
Well, there's nothing to do but keep laboring on

So he sits in the bar and he smokes his cigar
And he boasts how he's never alone
Ah, but I know he's lying, his big heart is breaking
Murphy can never go home

And it's a hard, rocky road that first took him to Birmingham
Long in the making with no going back
He was writing no letters, nor words of his whereabouts
No family at all for to help him keep track
He can stay here all night in no hurry at all
Cause there's nobody waiting but old Father Time
And as the last rays of sun, they go down on the Brohm????
A song from his childhood he quietly will rhyme

As he sits in the bar and he smokes his cigar
And he boasts how he's never alone
Ah, but I know he's lying, his big heart is breaking
Murphy can never go home

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 30 Apr 20 - 08:13 AM

Given the first line of the third verse, would it not be "the Brum", since one old familiar term for the city was "Brummagen" (nineteenth-century), and "Brummie" is still certainly heard as a word for a local. Sure to be someone who knows if the place itself is called by locals "The Brum", and to what extent the other two words are used by them.

Good Luck

ABCD,
who spent a good deal of time straining to decipher words from old recordings, until he learnt about Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: cnd
Date: 30 Apr 20 - 02:38 PM

ABCD, I had that same thought but I didn't want to assert that point since I was only pontificating; I wasn't sure if that was true or not.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 30 Apr 20 - 03:17 PM

Whereas I have long regarded myself as an instant expert on every subject under the Sun. Just thinking about the line about the last rays of sun &c., had I heard that in any Irish song, I'd have assumed the "B---" word was the name of a river (or even a hill/mountain) in the labourer's own townland or at least locality. However, the man who made the song has already got listeners thinking of Birmingham from the start of this final verse, so I'm pretty confident with the suggestion. Hope someone from Birmingham taps on this thread-title. Good Luck.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 30 Apr 20 - 03:26 PM

From Wikipedia: "Brum" – shortened form of "Brummagem", a local form of the city's name. The derived term "Brummie" can refer both to the people of the area, and the local dialect and accent.[13]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: GUEST,Mick Curry.
Date: 16 Dec 20 - 05:50 PM

Hi, Re lyric 'Murphy Can Never Go Home.'
The correct lyric is:

As the last rays of sun go down on the Brum
A song from his childhood he quietly rhymes

Brum is a calloquial English term for the city of Birmingham.
Mick Curry.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murphy Can Never Go Home
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Dec 20 - 03:32 PM

Very much a companion for The Old Bog Road - "the saddest song I ever heard" as a cousin said when he sang it at a wake.

.THE OLD BOG ROAD

My feet are here on Broadway this blessed harvest morn,
But O, the ache that's in them for the spot where I was born.
My weary hands are blistered from work in cold and heat,
And O, to swing a scythe today thru fields of Irish wheat.
Had I the chance to wander back, or own a King's abode,
'Tis soon I'd see the hawthorn tree by the Old Bog Road.

When I was young and restless my mind was ill at ease
Dreaming of America and gold beyond the seas.
O, sorrow take their money, 'tis hard to get that same,
And what's the world to any man, where no-one speaks his name?
I've had my day, and here I am with building bricks for load,
A long three thousand miles away from the Old Bog Road.

My mother died last springtide, when Ireland's fields were green:
The neighbours said her waking was the finest ever seen.
There were snowdrops and primroses piled up beside her bed,
And Ferns Church was crowded when the funeral Mass was said,
But there was I on Broadway, with building bricks for load,
When they carried out her coffin from the Old Bog Road,

There was a decent girl at home who used to walk with me,
Her eyes were soft and sorrowful like sunbeams on the sea.
Her name was Mary Dwyer, but that was long ago,
And the ways of God are wiser than the things a man may know.
She died the year I left her, with building bricks for load -
I'd best forget the times we met on the Old Bog Road.

Ah! life's a weary puzzle past finding out by man.
I take the day for what it's worth and do the best I can.
Since no-one cares a rush for me, what needs to make a moan?
I go my way, and draw my pay, and smoke my pipe alone.
Each human heart must know its grief, though bitter be the load,
So God be with you, Ireland and the Old Bog Road."