Och, love is the soul of a nate Irishman
He loves all the lovely, loves that he can,
With your sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green!
His heart is as good-humour’d, ’tis honest and sound,
No malice or hatred is there to be found.
He courts and marries, he drinks and he fights,
For love, all for love, for in that he delights,
With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green.

Who has e’er had the luck to see Donnybrook fair,
An Irishman in all his glory is there,
With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green:
His clothes spick and span, new without e’er a speck,
A neat Barcelona tied ’round his white neck,
He goes to a tent and he spends half a crown,
He meets with a friend, and for love knocks him down
With his sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green.

At evening returning, as homeward he goes,
His heart light with whiskey, his head soft with blows
From a sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green.
He meets with his Shelah, who, blushing a smile,
Cries: “Get you gone Pat!” yet consents all the while;
To the priest then they go, and nine months after that
A fine baby cries out: “How d’ye do, father Pat,
With your sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green”

Bless the country, say I, that gave Patrick his birth,
Bless the land of the oak and its neighbouring earth,
Where grows the shillelagh and shamrock so green;
May the sons of the Thames, the Tweed and the Shannon,
Drub the foes who dare plant on our confines a cannon;
United and happy at loyalty’s shrine,
May the rose, leek and thistle long flourish and twine
Round a sprig of shillelagh and shamrock so green