Uploaded July 2020 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
Day 135 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "A Chicago newspaperman who happened to do in real life what Paddy Flynn does in this song, got ten days, as Paddy Flynn did, in the Portland County jail. While recovering from his bootleg headache, he learned the first three verses of a song there. For the fourth, we are indebted to philosophers at the extreme left in the labor movement and in modernist art in Chicago.
Whether sung solo or in ensemble or melee, the ungrammatical "A" in the last line is to be howled with high scorn. The word "trun" means "threw" or "throwed"; it rhymes with fun. A "can" signifies a jail or place of forcible detention.
I'm a stranger in your city, my name is Paddy Flynn.
I got drunk the other night and the coppers run me in.
I had no money to pay my fine, no one to go my bail;
So I got stuck for ninety days in the Portland County jail.
Oh, the only friend that I had left was Happy Sailor Jack;
He told me all the lies he knew, and all the safes he'd cracked;
He'd cracked them in Seattle, he'd robbed the Western Mail.
Twould freeze the blood of an honest man in the Portland County jail.
Oh, such a bunch of devils no one ever saw,
Robbers, thieves and highwaymen, breakers of the law;
They sang a song the whole night long, the curses fell like hail;
I'll bless the day that 'takes me away from the Portland County jail.
Finest friend I ever had was Officer McGurk.
He said I was a lazy bum, a no-good and a shirk.
One Saturday night when I got tight, he trun me in the can,
And now you see he's made of me A honest workingman.
Day 135 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "A Chicago newspaperman who happened to do in real life what Paddy Flynn does in this song, got ten days, as Paddy Flynn did, in the Portland County jail. While recovering from his bootleg headache, he learned the first three verses of a song there. For the fourth, we are indebted to philosophers at the extreme left in the labor movement and in modernist art in Chicago.
Whether sung solo or in ensemble or melee, the ungrammatical "A" in the last line is to be howled with high scorn. The word "trun" means "threw" or "throwed"; it rhymes with fun. A "can" signifies a jail or place of forcible detention.
I'm a stranger in your city, my name is Paddy Flynn.
I got drunk the other night and the coppers run me in.
I had no money to pay my fine, no one to go my bail;
So I got stuck for ninety days in the Portland County jail.
Oh, the only friend that I had left was Happy Sailor Jack;
He told me all the lies he knew, and all the safes he'd cracked;
He'd cracked them in Seattle, he'd robbed the Western Mail.
Twould freeze the blood of an honest man in the Portland County jail.
Oh, such a bunch of devils no one ever saw,
Robbers, thieves and highwaymen, breakers of the law;
They sang a song the whole night long, the curses fell like hail;
I'll bless the day that 'takes me away from the Portland County jail.
Finest friend I ever had was Officer McGurk.
He said I was a lazy bum, a no-good and a shirk.
One Saturday night when I got tight, he trun me in the can,
And now you see he's made of me A honest workingman.
