’Do you remember, neighbours, the day I left the white strand?  I did not find anyone to give me advice, or to tell me not to go.  But with the help of God, as I have my health, and the help of the King of Grace, whichever State I will go to, I will never turn back again.

’Do you remember, girls, that day long ago when I was sick and when the priest said, and the doctor, that with care I would come through?  I got up after; I went to work at the factory, until Sullivan wrote a letter that put me down a step.

’And Bab O’Donnell rose up and put a shawl about her.  She went to the office till she got work for me to do; there was never a woman I was with that would not shake hands with me; now I am at work again, and no thanks to Sullivan.

’It is a great shame to look down on Ireland, and I think myself it is not right; for the potatoes are growing in the gardens there, and the women milking the cows.  That is not the way in Boston, but you may earn it or leave it there; and if the man earns a dollar, the woman will be out drinking it.

’My curse on the curraghs, and my blessings on the boats; my curse on that hooker that did the treachery; for it was she snapped away my four brothers from me; the best they were that ever could be found.  But what does Kelly care, so long as he himself is in their place?

’My grief on you, my brothers, that did not come again to land; I would have put a boarded coffin on you out of the hand of the carpenter; the young women of the village would have keened you, and your people and your friends; and is it not Bridget O’Malley you left miserable in the world?

’It is very lonely after Pat and Tom I am, and in great trouble for them, to say nothing of my fair-haired Martin that was drowned long ago; I have no sister, and I have no other brother, no mother; my father weak and bent down; and, O God, what wonder for him!

’My curse on my sister’s husband; for it was he made the boat; my own curse again on himself and on his tribe.  He married my sister on me, and he sent my brothers to death on me; and he came himself into the farm that belonged to my father and my mother!

A Connemara schoolmaster tells me:  ’At Killery Bay one time, I went into a house where there was an old man that had just lost his son by drowning.  And he was sitting over the fire with his head in his hands, making a lament.  I remember one verse of it that said:  “My curse on the man that made the boat, that he did not tell me there was death lurking in it.”  I asked afterwards what the meaning of that was, and they said there is a certain board in every boat that the maker gives three blows of his hammer on, after he is done making it.  And he knows someway by the sound of the blows if anyone will lose his life in that boat.’  It is likely Bridget O’Malley had this idea in her mind when she made her lament.