“The Ejectment” from the London Illustrated Times Dec. 16, 1848
Posted by Jim on October 15, 2020
The landed proprietors in a circle all around – and for many miles in every direction – warned their tenantry, with threats of their direst vengeance, against the humanity of extending to any of them the hospitality of a single night’s shelter. Many of those poor people were unable to emigrate with their families, while, at home, the hand of every man was thus raised against them. They were driven from the land on which Providence had placed them; and, in the state of society surrounding them, every other walk of life was rigidly closed against them. What was the result?. After battling in vain with privation and pestilence, they at last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb; and in little more than three years, nearly a fourth of them lay quietly in their graves.”
The Ejectment:
Farewell my Country a Long farewell
My tale of anguish no tongue can tell
For I’m forced to fly o’er the ocean wide
From the home I love by Lough Sheelin side.
How proud was I of my girl so fair
I was envied most by the young men there
When I brought her back a bashful bride
To my cottage home by Lough Sheelin side.
Chorus: Farewell my love a fond adieu
Farewell my comrades and my country too
For I’m forced to fly o’er the ocean wide
From the home I love by Lough Sheelin side.
But all our joys were too good to last
For the Landlord came our young hopes to blast
In vain we pleaded for mercy no
He hurled us out in the blinding snow.
Then no one opened for us their door
For ill-felt vengeance would reach them sure
My Eileen fainted in my arms and died
On that snowy night by Lough Sheelin side.
Chorus
I buried her down in the churchyard low
Where in the springtime the wild flowers grow
I shed no tears for my tongue felt dry
On that fearful night by Lough Sheelin side.
Farewell my country farewell all day
The ship will soon take me far away
But oh my fond heart would sooner bide
Near my Eileen’s grave by Lough Sheelin side.
Chorus