My tender wife and children three, under the lash of misery,
Unknown to friends and neighbours, I've often seen to weep.
Sad grief it seized her tender heart, when forced her only cow to part,
And canted [94] was before her face, the poor-rates for to pay;
Cut down in all her youthful bloom, she's gone into her silent tomb;
Forlorn I will mourn her loss when in America."
In the same ballad we have an expression of the comparative paradise the Irish expect to find—and do find, by the way—in that land which excites so much the pity of the philanthropic aristocracy:—
"Let Erin's sons and daughters fair now for the promised land prepare,
America, that beauteous soil, will soon your toil repay;
Employment, it is plenty there, on beef and mutton you can fare,