| lyric | Come all ye boys from Erin's Isle
And listen unto my song
It’s composed of forty verses
And it won’t detain you long.
It’s all about the history
Of one brave young Irish Tar
Who sailed as man before the mast
Aboard of the Calabar.
The Calabar was a clipper ship
Copper fastened both fore and aft
The rudder was away behind
The wheel a great big shaft
With half a gale to swell her sail
She could do one knot an hour
The fastest craft on the Owenacurra
With only one donkey power.
The captain was a strapping youth
His height being four foot two.
His eyes were red, his ears were green
His nose was a Prussian blue.
He wore a leather medal
He won in the Crimah war
And his wife was cook, pilot and crew
On board the Calabar.
As we went down by the Holy Ground
The stormy wind did blow
Our bo’sun slipped on an orange peel
And fell in the hold below.
The captain cried ‘A piratical junk,
And on us she do gain
And if ever I go to Spike again,
Be japers, I’ll go by train.’
Now when we rounded Roches Point
A very dangerous part
Our ship she struck a knob of coal
Which wasn’t marked on the chart
To stop the vessel from sinking
And save our precious lives
We threw the cargo overboard,
Including the captain’s wife.
We got out our ammunition to
Meet the treacherous foe
We had boarding pikes and
Cutlasses and a rolling pin also.
‘Put on full speed,’ the captain said,
‘Or we’ll be sorely pressed.
But do not shoot the engineer, for
He is doing his best.’
Oh, the heroes fell both thick and fast,
And pints of blood was split;
They were mostly falling before they
Were hit, in case they might be kilt.
And at last the pirate surrendered his ship
The crew being all flat out.
And we found she was a sister ship,
With a cargo of Murphy’s stout.
The ship is in Haulbowline now,
And the crew in the county jail;
And I’m the one surviving
Yet, to tell the terrible tale
But if I could get back to ship
I’d be sailing off afar.
Of the whole bloody fleet I’d be
Admiral, in charge of the Calabar. |