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Here's adieu unto my native home that I shall see no more,
With love my thoughts will turn to thee when on a foreign shore;
Farewell to friends and parents dear, from you I'll part in pain,
Likewise to you my blooming girl, my bonny blue-eyed Jane.
When I am absent from your side out on the lone blue sea,
Your image bright unto my mind will ever foremost be
To cheer me in my lonely watch until I see again
The form of her I love so well, my bonny blue-eyed Jane.
When far beneath the sunny skies in foreign lands I roam,
Powerless will their beauty be to win my love from home;
Though I may meet in friendship with the girls from sunny Spain,
They will not win my love from you, my bonny blue-eyed Jane.
O were I born of nobleblood with wealth at my command,
I'd share it all with her I love that girl so fair and grand
The pearls from the ocean depths devoid of spot or stain
Would not enhance the beauty of my bonny blue-eyed Jane.
And if kind fortune should decree that riches I should find,
With loving haste I'd return to her the girl I left behind —
Across the deep and changeful seas from roving I'd refrain
And marry her I love so well, my bonny blue-eyed Jane.
Collected in 1979 from Philip Foley of Tilting, NL, by Genevieve Lehr and Anita Best and published as #12 in Come And I Will Sing You: A Newfoundland Songbook, p.21, edited by Genevieve Lehr (University of Toronto Press © 1985/2003).
Genevieve Lehr noted that this lovely immigrant song is rarely sung in Newfoundland.
A variant was arranged and recorded as My Bonny Blue-Eyed Jane by Jim Payne and Fergus O'Byrne (How Good Is Me Life ©2007 SingSong Inc., St. John's, NL).
