Farewell to our lovers and our kind relations, Farewell to the homes we love well. There is never an ending to our tribulations For they've damned us like sinners to Hell.
Chorus (after each verse): Here's adieu, here's adieu To the green fields of England Now we're parting from you.
The sweet fetters of love they are wrenching asunder As they tear us from sweethearts and wives. And on some foreign shore we are sentenced to wander In exile the rest of our lives.
From Devon, from Derby, from Wiltshire and Wales, From Norwich, from Newark and Frome, We are herded together from verminous gaols And like vermin are forced from our homes.
There's cheats and cut-purses and rogues with no name, There's swindlers and sheep-stealers bold, There's poor poaching fellows took nothing but game And there's footpads took nothing but gold!
There's coiners and clippers and ladies of pleasure, There's dicers and drunkards and whores, There's butchers and bakers who dealt in short measures And a few who have broken no laws.
There's some who expected to go to the scaffold, There's others who thought to go free. But now one and all in the hulks lie a-shackled And together must plough the salt sea.
There's some of our number are handsome and hearty, There's others the voyage will mend. But there's never a soul of our miserable party Will live to see England again.
So farewell to all judges so kind and forgiving, Farewell to your prisons and cells. For though me must leave all that makes life worth living, We are leaving you bastards as well!