American Old Time Song Lyrics: 25 Leave That Old Cradle To Me

Theater, Music-Hall, Nostalgic, Irish & Historic Old Songs, Volume 25

Leave That Old Cradle to Me.
Copyright, 1889, by F. Harding.
Written and Composed for, and Sung by T. J. Farron.

One morning the bailiffs on mischief were bent,
Which the law had no mercy to show;
Poor old Jim Shea was behind in the rent,
To evict him the bailiffs did go.
To ransack his cabin at once they did start,
Threw his furniture on the roadside;
Old Shea he looked on with a pitiful eye,
With an outburst of grief he did cry.

Chorus.
Of friend I'm bereft, I have not a soul left,
My boys and my girls o'er the sea.
They were raised in that cot, you may take all the lot
But leave that old cradle to me.

So cold was the weather, but it mattered not.
The bailiffs cruel were they;
By degrees they were making a wreck of that spot,
Which left poor Shea homeless that day.
Not even his sighs or his pray'rs of distress,
Those monsters they would take no heed;
And for that old relic he longed to posess,
To them on his knees he did plead.-Chorus.

The work of destruction how soon it was o'er.
The gang then prepared for to start;
Old Shea he looked on with his eyes full of tears,
That once was the home of his heart.
The sight was too much for poor feeble old Shea,
So be fell and was soon free from care;
His soul it had fled to that land far away,
But the last words old Shea whispered were:-Chorus.