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As I rovèd out on one fine summer's evening
Down by some green meadow I chanced for to stray;
There I heard a poor woman in sad lamentation,
And I drew myself nearer for to hear what she did say.
I asked that poor widow the cause of her weeping,
And I offered her my help if she would dry up her tears;
But at length she replied, "Sir, my grief is unrelieving,
For the sea is the grave of our brave volunteers.
"My Henry and me we were only twelve months married
When war it broke out and for volunteers they signed;
My Henry he enlisted for to fight for his country,
And with hard-hearted strangers I am leavèd here behind."
He said, "Mary, my dear, we are only twelve months married,
I am leaving you in sorrow, dear, but dry up your tears,
For in short I will return home with riches and honour
When the war is all over for we brave volunteers."
It's well do I remember when their good ship she weighed anchor,
With songs and with music the air it did resound,
But little did they think when their hearts were so merry
That they never would again set their foot upon the ground.
And sad were the dreams all that night on my pillow,
The wind it did blow and it told in my ears
Of those five hundred young men overwhlemed in the billows,
And not one of them escaped of those brave volunteers.
So you maidens of Scotland you'll have right for to remember,
You can water the grass with the tears from your eyes,
But your sad lamentation will never recover
From the depths of the ocean your dear sweethearts lie.
You maidens of Ireland you'll have right for to remember,
With your eyes full of tears and your hearts sad and sore,
Of that dark stormy night, the twenty-eighth of November,
When your sweethearts they were drownded on that wild rocky shore.
Sleep on my poor infant, you know not of my wailing,
I will cease from deep pining, I will dry up my tears,
For God in his mercy He feeds those young ravens
Whilst we widows we must mourn for our brave volunteers.
Collected in 1951 from Mrs. Mary Ann Galpin of Codroy, NL, by Ken Peacock and published in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 2, pp.432-433, by the National Museum of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved.
Comprehensive historical research copyrighted in the CSU Fresno Ballad Index concluded that this ballad was written about The Rival, a ship out of Greenock, Scotland, which sank off the Galway coast of Ireland on December 4, 1832, while transporting 472 British volunteers to Oporto, Portugal, in support of Don Pedro II in the Miguelista War.
