Patrick Russell

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[Verse]
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My name is Patrick Russell, I've led a Christian life
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I speak of family history as it's transcribed by my wife
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I sit here in New Hampton, the year is nineteen ten
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Looking back from Iowa towards mother Ireland

[Verse]
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I was born in Templemore in eighteen twenty-five
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Recalled a happy boyhood until my mother died
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Starvation crept across the land, America's our dream
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Six cruel weeks on stormy seas aboard the ship Tyrene

[Chorus]
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American primitive man
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In an American primitive land
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I washed my face in a frying pan
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American primitive man

[Verse]
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At last we docked in old Quebec, the English offered farming ground
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But we'd lived too long under English rule, to United States we're bound
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By train and then by cattle boat, ah, the filth down in that hold
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We landed in Milwaukee, trekked two hundred miles or more

[Bridge]
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A sack of new potatoes was carried by each man
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Four spades for cultivation, we'd brought from Ireland
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We worked at splitting railroad ties, bought one old milking cow
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A quarter section uncleared land, two oxen and a plough

[Verse]
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At night we heard the wolves howl on our newly purchased farm
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And starving lads from the civil war took shelter in our barn
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The Larsens and the Cooneys, the Russells, the Molloys
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We tilled the soil of Iowa and grew a spate of girls and boys

[Chorus]
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American primitive man
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In an American primitive land
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A whiskey still in an oatmeal can
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American primitive man
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I'm an American primitive man