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The Maid of Erin

[ Roud 2059 ; Ballad Index HGam238 ; trad.]

Steve Turner sang The Maid of Erin on his 2016 Tradition Bearers album Spirit of the Game. He noted:

There appears to be very little known about the origins of this song which is probably an early Victorian parlour ballad, collected in 1847. It it was actually an Irish song it might be known as an “aisling” or dream song. But I doubt if this is the case, so I can only call it a pseudo aisling!

Lyrics

Steve Turner sings The Maid or Erin

My thoughts delight to wander
All on some distant shore,
Where lovely fair and tender
Is she whom I adore.
May heaven its blessings sparing
On her bestow them free,
The lovely maid of Erin
Who sweetly sang to me.

Had fortune fixed my station
All in some fateful hour,
The monarch of a nation,
Endowed with wealth and power,
All wealth and power sharing,
My peerless queen shall be,
The lovely maid of Erin
Who sweetly sang to me.

Although the restless ocean
May long between us roar,
While my heart’s in motion,
She’ll dwell within its core.
Artless and endearing,
Mild and young is she,
The lovely maid of Erin
Who sweetly sang to me.

When fate gives intimation
That my last hour is nigh,
With placid resignation
I’ll lay me down and die.
Fond hopes me cheering,
That in heaven I’ll see
The lovely maid of Erin
Who sweetly sang to me,
Who sweetly sang to me.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Garry Gillard for transcribing Steve Turner’s lyrics.