If you ever go across the sea to Ireland
Be it only at the closing of your day
You can sit and watch the moon rise over Cladagh
And see the sun go down on Galway Bay
Just to see again the ripple on the trout stream
The women in the meadow making hay
Or to sit beside a turf fire in a cabin
And watch the barefoot gasuns at their play
For the breezes blowing o'er the sea from Ireland
Are perfumed by the heather as they blow
And the women in the highlands diggin' pratties
Speak a language that the strangers do not know
And the strangers came and tried to teach us their ways
And scorned us for being what we are
But they might as well go chasing after moonbeams
Or light a penny candle on a star
And if there's going to be a life hereafter
And somehow I feel sure there's going to be
I will ask my god to let me spend my heaven
In that dear isle across the Irish Sea
Maybe someday I'll go back again to Ireland,
If my dear old wife would only pass away!
She's nearly got my heart broke with her nagging,
She's got a mouth as big as Galway Bay.
See her drinking sixteen pints of Pabst Blue Ribbon
And then she can walk home without a sway;
If the sea was beer instead of salty water
She would live and die in Galway Bay.
See he drinking sixteen pints at Pat Joe Murphy's
The barman says, "I think it's time you go."
Well, she doesn't try to answer him in Gaelic
But in language that the clergy do not know.
On her back she has tattooed a map of Ireland
And when she takes her bath on Saturday,
She rubs the Sunlight Soap around by Claddagh
Just to watch the suds go down by Galway Bay.
Recorded by Tommy Makem
