Patrick Russell - Tom Russell/Iris Dement

My name is Patrick Russell I've led a Christian life

I speak of family history as it's transcribed by my wife

I sit here in New Hampton the year is nineteen ten

Looking back from Iowa towards Mother Ireland

I was born in Templemore in eighteen twenty five

Recalled a happy boyhood until my mother died

Starvation crept across the land America's our dream

Six cruel weeks on stormy seas aboard the ship Tyrene

American primitive man in an American primitive land

I washed my face in a frying pan American primitive man

At last we docked in old Quebec the English offered farm and ground

But we'd lived too long under English rule to United States we're bound

By train and then by cattle boat aw the filth down in that hold

We landed in Milwalkee trekked 200 miles or more

A sack of new potatoes was carried by each man

Four spades for cultivation we'd brought from Ireland

We worked at splitting railroad ties bought one old milking cow

A quarter section uncleared land two oxen and a plough

At night we heard the wolves howl on our newly purchased farm

And starving lads from the civil war took shelter in our barn

The Larsens and the Cooneys the Russells the Molloys

We tilled the soil of Iowa and grew a spate of girls and boys

American primitive man in an American primitive land

A whiskey still in an oatmeal can American primitive man

I'm an American primitive man