On the 4th of July 1806, we set sail form the sweet cove of Cork,
We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks for the Grand City Hall in New York,
T’was a wonderful craft, she was rigged fore and aft,
And, oh, how the wild wind drove her,
She stood several blasts, she had twenty seven masts,
And they called her the Irish Rover.
We had one million bags of the best Sligo rags,
We’d two million barrels of stone,
And we’d three million sides of old blind horses hides, four million barrels of bones,
We had five million hogs, six million dogs, seven million barrels of porter,
And we’d eight million bails of old nanny goats tales in the hold of the Irish Rover.
We had sailed seven years when the measles broke out and the ship lost its way in a fog,
And the whale of a crew was reduced down to two: myself and the captain’s old dog,
Then the ship struck a rock – oh, Lord, what a shock,
The bulkhead was turned right over,
She turned nine times around and the poor old dog was drowned, and the last of the Irish Rover.
