This is a traditional Irish song by an unknown poet, mid to late 1700s, arranged by Clannad. It appears on Clannad’s debut album Clannad, released in 1973. See another version An t-Oileán Úr by Atlan.

Now a traditional folk song in Ireland, this poem displays the reluctance of native Irish Catholics to emigrate at a time when many Scots-Irish Protestants in Ulster, descended from lowland Scots, were leaving by the thousands for America.

An tOileán Úr (“The New Island”) is the traditional name for America in Ireland. As early as the 1490s the term “the New Isle” was current in England as a synonym for the New World.

Translation from the National Humanities Center:

I once took a notion that I would leave my people and depart for the New Island, 2 and so I did. As I left I prayed the High King of Heaven to preserve me through all dangers to the end of my journey.

Once there I walked twenty miles and never met a Christian 3 — No, nor even a horse or a cow or a sheep grazing on the meadow. There was nothing but dense woods and deep glens resounding with the roar of wild beasts, and the people wore no more clothes than would amount to a thread twisted between the fingers.

Then I chanced upon a house, and the people there asked me where I came from and in what country I had been reared. We spoke in English, and I answered that I had been brought up in Ireland — in the wood of Lisreagh, beside Lough Erne.

No sooner had I spoken than an old woman rose from her cozy nook beside the fire and came over to shake my hand. “God bless you of all the people I’ve ever met — for I myself was reared in Lisbellaw.

“Many were the pleasant days I spent in Ireland and beside Lough Erne in the wood of Lisreagh; there’s no other place like it from Wales to the Head of Howth or from Cork to Lisbellaw.”

When I saw these people I made up my mind that I would be happier to live the rest of my life and die in Ireland, for that is where I would find kind and delightful young folk to pass the time with me by day and by night.