‘To my son in Amerikay’.
Some years ago in the
This story all began
Before emigration was finally cured
By that great economical plan!
A poor young lad had to leave his home
And travel across the sea
But he got well-paid in the building trade
On the shores of Amerikay.
Now, he did very well, but he sent nothing home
And his mother began to think
That he had run away with some ‘blonde’
Or was spending his money on drink,
So she wrote him a letter and folded it up
And sent it on its way
And on the cover she clearly wrote
‘To my son in Amerikay’.
The postman collected that letter she wrote
And drove it in a van to
Where he put it aboard of a liner in
That landed it in
And there, with the whiskey and the greyhounds too
The mail-bags lay on the quay
And among the rest was a letter addressed
‘To my son in Amerikay’.
Now American postmen, I needn’t remark
Are rather like you and me
And when they came to this letter at last
They didn’t know what to do.
They consulted all the official lists
But these had nothing to say
There was no directory would help them to find
A son in Amerikay.
So it lay round the office for years and years
And gave all the boys a laugh
Until it got some use at last
In the training of the staff.
To every new postman that came on the job
It was shown as ‘Exhibit ‘A”
As a typical letter, insufficiently addressed
‘To my son in Amerikay’.
The son got older and wiser too
And at last, to himself, he said
”I wond’r how are things wit’ me mother at home
And is she alive or dead?’
So he walked round the block to the GPO
And he asked with his cap in his hand
‘Is there any chance you’ve a letter for me
From me mother in
‘We have indeed ,Sir, and here it is
We’ve been waiting for you to call
We knew that someone would call some day
From
From two hundred millions that’s livin’ now
In the whole of the
For a mother in
Her son in Amerikay’.
The foregoing can be sung to the air of ‘The Rocks of Knockanure’