“Erin's Lovely Shore”
Description
The singer is "an Irish exile girl." She thinks about the past at home. She dreams she returns to Ireland on an ocean liner and meets her grown sister; she cannot understand the talk because it is Gaelic. She wakes. She warns others to stay in Ireland.
Notes
Presumably from the late nineteenth century, since the first real ocean liner was the _Great Eastern_ of 1858 (for background, see e.g. Lincoln P. Paine, _Ships of the World_, Houghton Mifflin, 1997), and the first successful ocean liner was the _Oceanic_ of 1870. So we must presume the song in its current form is post-1870. But Irish was already in decline by then; the sooner after that the song appeared, the more it makes sense. - RBW
References
- McBride 25, "Erin's Lovely Shore" (1 text, 1 tune)
- BI, McB1025