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Erin’s Lovely Home

[ Roud 5175 ; Ballad Index GrHo021 ; Mudcat 121853 ; trad.]

George ‘Geordie’ Hanna sang Erin’s Lovely Home to Robin Morton in his sister Sarah Anne O’Neill’s home near Derrytresk, Coalisland, Co Tyrone in 1977. This recording was included in the following year on the siblings’ Topic album of traditional songs of a Tyrone family, On the Shores of Lough Neagh. Geordie Hanna also sang it on his posthumous 2002 album The Fisher’s Cot. John Moulden noted on the original album:

This is not the usual song of this title which tells of parental opposition to a girl’s marriage. Instead it is an emigration song probably transmitted by ballad sheet. Eddie Butcher of Magilligan sings it also. Geordie`s version is again from the McMahons, this time from Paddy‘s wife Mary, though she had it from Paddy‘s grandfather. Fever was a fact of emigrant ships during the time of the Famine in Ireland. Conditions were appalling and typhus was often brought on board among the passengers. It’s estimated that of over 100,000 emigrants to Canada almost 40,000 died, 17,000 of them during the voyage (Woodham Smith, C.: The Great Hunger: Four Square Books, 1964, p.234). “If crosses and tombs could be erected on the water”, wrote a United States Commissioner for emigrations, “… the whole route of the emigrant vessels from Europe to America would long since have assumed the appearance of a crowded cemetery”.

Niell Hanna sang Erin’s Lovely Home on his 2017 album Autumn Winds. He noted:

My Grandfather sang this emigration song which he learned from Jimmy Robinson of Maghery. An Irish family sell their land and set sail from Belfast. This song captures the fate of many Irish men and women who lost their lives on the journey across the sea.

Owen Ralph sang Erin’s Lovely Home on his 2018 album Chamber Folk.

Lyrics

Geordie Hanna sings Erin’s Lovely Home

My father, he being a farmer reared to industry
He had four sons to manhood grown, and lovely daughters three
Our land’s too small to serve us all so some of us must roam
With sisters two I bid adieu to Erin’s lovely home

My father, he sold the second cow and he borrowed twenty pounds
It was in the pleasant month of May that we sailed from Belfast town
With thousands more we left our shore in safety to roam
Our friends may mourn for we’ll ne’er return to Erin’s lovely home

We hadn’t been long sailing till fever it seized our crew
Falling like the autumn leaves and overboard were threw
The ocean waves they rolled o’er our graves, our bed the ocean foam
Our friends may mourn for we’ll ne’er return to Erin’s lovely home.