'Twas on a dreary new years day
As the shades of night came down.
A lorry load of volunteers
Approached a border town
There were men from Dublin and from Cork,
Fermanagh and Tyrone,
But the leader was a Limerick man,
Sean South of Garryowen.

And as they moved along the street
Up to the barrack door,
The scorned the danger they would meet,
The fate that lay in store.
They were fighting for old Ireland's cause,
To claim our very own,
And the foremost of that gallant band
Was Sean Sabhat of Garryowen.

But the sergeant foiled their daring plan,
He spied them thro' the door.
Then the sten guns and the rifles,
A hail of death did pour
And when that awful night was past,
Two men were cold as stone,
There was one from near the border and
One from Garryowen.

No more he'll hear the seagull cry,
O'er the murmuring Shannon tide,
For he fell beneath the northern sky,
Brave Hanlon at his side,
He has gone to join that gallant band of
Plunkett, Pearse and Tone,
A martyr for old Ireland,
Sean South of Garryowen.