New Shoes For Tom Guerin

from Tell Tale Heart by Chuck Brodsky

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about

During the Great Hunger in Ireland of the 1840's, 3 year old Tom Guerin was thought to be dead and was buried in a mass grave outside the town of Skibbereen, Co. Cork. After 3 days, the gravediggers were trying to make room for more corpses and one of them struck Tom's legs with his shovel, causing the little boy to cry out from beneath the dirt.

lyrics

I'll write 33 verses
For one pair of shoes
To travel the countryside
Spreading the news
To wander Roscarberry
And all of west Cork
While some head to Boston
And others New York

I lived in the poorhouse
I slept on the floor
There was room to sit down
And not an inch more
The people who died
Were carried away
Without ceremony
And without delay

Death by starvation
Was sweeping the land
On my little shoulder
It lay its cold hand
Me mother she begged for
A coffin for me
They all thought I’d died
When I was only three

"I roam all the world
Admire each scene
And a tax on the ratepayers
I've never been
I only appeal to you
Now for a pair
Of brogues
And I'll vanish again into air"

The grave digger's shovel
Plunged in the dirt
Struck me so hard
It must to have hurt
Though some say I moaned
And some say I screamed
All agreed that I wasn’t
As dead as I seemed

Not so many people
Get lowered down twice
I don't recommend it
Just once should suffice
I'm the boy who was buried
And dug up alive
The poet, the genius
The one who survived

"I rose from the dead
In the year '48
When a grave at the abbey
Had near been my fate
Since then for subsistence
I've done all my best
Though one shoe points eastward
And the other points west"

"I roam all the world
Admire each scene
And a tax on the ratepayers
I've never been
I only appeal to you
Now for a pair
Of brogues
And I'll vanish again into air"

I'll write 33 verses
For one pair of shoes
To travel the countryside
Spreading the news
To wander Roscarberry
And all of west Cork
While some head to Boston
And others New York

credits

from Tell Tale Heart, released March 31, 2015
Chuck Brodsky - vocal, guitar
Blackie O'Connell - uilleann pipes
Cyril O'Donahue - bouzouki
Martin O'Malley - bodhran, djembe

license

all rights reserved

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about

Chuck Brodsky image

Chuck Brodsky Asheville, North Carolina

See bio at www.chuckbrodsky.com/bio. If you'd like to support me further, you can do so through my paypal address - chuck@chuckbrodsky.com. Thanks.

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