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Come all you good people wherever you may be,
I hope you'll pay attention and listen unto me;
'Tis all about two lovers, was scarcely in their bloom,
When one of them was murdered and the other hung last June.
'Twas near the town of Sligo where their parents they did dwell,
They had one only daughter and indeed they loved her well;
Pat O'Brien was this man's name, ship's carpenter by trade,
Day and night he took delight in courting this fair maid.
Until he gained her virgin bloom which proved his overthrow,
And bad advice and jealousy caused him for to do so;
He wrote his love a letter and unto her did say,
"I have been working all this week, working night and day.
"I like it will be your company this evening in the grove."
This fair one she got ready for to let no one know;
She dressed herself in private and over there she go,
When he saw her coming he ran himself to hide.
"Oh Paddy, my love Paddy, what makes you look so pale?"
"I don't want none of your talk, kneel down pray to your grave;
I swore an oath this evening, no woman shall I deceive."
He caught her by the yellow locks and pulled her to the ground.
With a knife he pressed her, gave her a deadly wound,
With a spade he dug her grave and then dashed out her brains;
That very same night unto her mother's room she appeared,
Her mother she rose up to her with neither dread nor fear.
Saying, "Mother, dearest mother, you won't see me anymore,
For Pat O'Brien have murdered me and left me in my gore;
Go straight unto John Keating's grove and there don't make delay,
'Tis there you'll find my body buried over in the clay.
"And on a rock my blood is spilt where he have murdered me,
And go and have him taken, for hung he'll surely be."
A large crowd assembled on that very night.
They all walked around her near about that place,
Pat O'Brien knelt over her she dashed blood in her face;
This young man was taken, put in a dismal cell,
The sight of his situation he really couldn't tell.
They spoke of his execution, he stood upon the dock,
He spoke those words so feebly, he made the people shock:
"I'll tell ye, judge and jurymen and all a-standing by,
'Twas I that murdered Nancy Ryan, I'm willing for to die."
Collected in 1950 from John Kehoe (b.1864) of Flatrock, NL, and published in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA). MacEdward Leach also collected two other variants in 1951, one with this same title from Mrs. K. McCarthy of St. Shott's, NL, and one from Charlie Williams of St. Vincent's NL, published as Patrick Power (Parker). Both variants were also published in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA). Another variant was collected in 1978 from C. Parsons of Placentia Bay, NL, by Eric West, and deposited in the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA 78-236, ms. p.13)
