Skibbereen – Irish Famine Ballad of Loss, Exile & Eviction | Traditional Irish Ballad

Skibbereen — An Irish Famine Ballad of Loss, Exile & Eviction

Skibbereen stands among the most heartbreaking of all Irish ballads — a father’s story told to his son about why they left their homeland. It is a song born from the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) of the 1840s, when hunger, eviction, and exile scarred every parish in Ireland.

In the ballad, a young man asks his father why they now live in exile. The old man answers with quiet pain: their home in Skibbereen, County Cork was destroyed, their crops failed, and their people starved while landlords seized the land. Soldiers came “to drive us from our home,” and his wife — the boy’s mother — died in the chaos that followed.

Every verse deepens the tragedy. The father’s memories are not just personal; they are the voice of an entire nation cast adrift. The famine years saw more than a million Irish people die, and another million forced to sail for America, never to return.
Through the song’s haunting refrain — “And that’s the reason why I left old Skibbereen” — we hear both sorrow and simmering defiance.

Yet Skibbereen is more than a lament. It became a song of remembrance and awakening, reminding generations of the injustice that tore Ireland apart. In later years, it was sung by emigrants longing for home, by rebels who saw in its story the roots of Ireland’s fight for freedom, and by families who refused to let those lost be forgotten.

Today, when the song is sung in pubs or concert halls, silence often falls — a shared reverence for the endurance of a people who carried their grief across the world, yet kept their love for Ireland alive.



LYRICS

[verse 1] Oh father dear, and I often hear you speak of Erin's isle Her lofty scenes, her valleys green, her mountains rude and wild They say it is a lovely land wherein a prince might dwell Then, why did you abandon it? Oh, the reason to me, tell [Verse 2] My son, I loved my native land with energy and pride 'Til a blight came over all my crops and my sheep and cattle died The rents and taxes were to pay, and I could not them redeem And that's the cruel reason I left old Skibbereen [verse3] 'Tis well do I remember the bleak December day When the bailiff and the landlord came to drive us all away They set the roof on fire with their cursed English spleen And that's another reason I left old Skibbereen [verse 4] Oh, your mother too, God rest her soul, lay on the snowy ground She fainted in her anguishing, seeing the desolation 'round She never rose but passed away from life to immortal dreams And that's another reason I left dear old Skibbereen [verse 5] It’s well I do remember the year of ’forty‑eight, When we arose with Erin’s boys to fight against our fate. I was hunted through the mountains, as traitor to the Queen, And that, my boy, is why I fled from dear old Skibbereen. [verse 6] Oh, you were only two years old and feeble was your frame I could not leave you with my friends, for you bore your father's name I wrapped you in my cóta mór at the dead of the night unseen And I heaved a sigh and I said good-bye to dear old Skibbereen [verse 7] Oh well, father dear, and the day will come when in vengeance we will call And Irish men, both stout and tall, will rally to the call I'll be the man to lead the band beneath the flag of green And loud and high, we'll raise the cry, "Revenge for Skibbereen!"
Location: Ireland

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