Daniel Sullivan

My name is Daniel Sullivan, I am a righteous man;
I write a saucy warning-pray take no knife in hand;
I write a saucy warning for all young men to mind-
When you get into a passion, I pray remember mine.

When I was a baby small, my mother she had a dream;
She dreamed she saw me hanging all on the gallows tree;
She dreamed she saw me hanging all on the gallows high;
'Twas in some foreign country, no friends to see me die.

Oh, when I sit a-thinking of the dreadful deed I've done,
A-taking the life of a nice young man, a mother's only son
I have no friends or relations, no one to take pity on me;
'Tis of my roving family, I know not where they be.

Oh, when I got my sentence, I was put into jail;
I called for pen and paper, that I might sit and write;
I wrote all day with tearful eyes, till my letter it was full;
I sent it to my brother, who lived in Liverpool.

I have a loving sister, to me she was always kind,
And when she comes to hear of this, she'll go out of her mind;
Likewise a loving sweetheart, but alas! we must part,
For death makes alterations, and love must be forgot.

There's just one quest I ask of you, just bear it in your mind:
To bury me in the green churchyard, beside of young O'Brien,
To bury me in the green churchyard, alongside his lonely bed;
Ten thousand will be standing round, when I am hanging dead.

Oh, now I'm on the gallows, my age is twenty-two,
I bid farewell to father and mother, to brothers and sister too,
I bid farewell to father and mother, to brothers and sister too;
I'm going away to leave you, the world I bid adieu.

Laws E22
DT #833
From Barry, Maine Woods Songster
Collected from Herbert Merry of Thorndyke Maine
RS, SOF
apr97