Song recalls '30s Tipp love story

Dublin songwriter Mike Brady has just released an album that contains a song about his uncle with a Tipperary connection.

His uncle's name was Patsy Daly, from Ringsend in Dublin. He was in love with a Tipperary girl whose name was Nora – Mike doesn't know her surname or where in Tipperary she came from.

Mike's mother told him the story of how his uncle died of TB way back in 1935. Nora died shortly before him but Patsy didn't know this until a few days before he passed away.

She had stopped coming to see him and went home to Tipperary. Patsy thought she had abandoned him until a letter arrived from her sister with the news of her death.

The lyric of the song is a more-or-less verbatim account of the story as told by Mike's mother (Patsy's sister). “I always thought that it was the saddest, and most romantic story I ever heard,” the songwriter said. “I always wondered if there was a family somewhere in Tipperary that had the story from Nora's point of view.”

Below are the lyrics of the song, which appears on the album 'A Word For The Begrudgers', which can be heard on Spotify (search for Mike Brady). If anyone knows anything about Nora and her Tipperary family, they are invited to contact Mike by email at mickpbrady@gmail.com or by phoning 087 6919071.

Patsy And Nora
 
Patsy was the eldest of a family of six
He was always kinda frail, he was always kinda sick
Their little house was overcrowded, they didn’t have a lot
But they always had plenty of the stuff that can’t be bought
When he fell in love with Nora it was like his life began
He started dreaming dreams, he started making plans
 
Now work was hard to come by back in 1932
So he signed up for the army, there was nothing else to do
But his army life was over by 1933
They didn’t want their soldiers infected with TB
So they took back his rifle, they took back his hope
Gave him a one-way ticket and sent him home broke
 
Some of us survive and some of us don’t
Even when we’re all in the same boat
It seems that our luck is all that we’ve got
Some of us are lucky, some of us are not
 
Patsy saw his days out in that little house
Lying in the bed or wrapped up on the couch
When Nora came to see him, they’d sit there holding hands
But she knew she was holding on to a dying man
She told him that she loved him, she said he could depend
She would stand by him, right until the end
 
But late in the winter of 1934
Nora came by one last time and never came no more
She went back to her family in a Tipperary town
Patsy couldn’t understand why she’d let him down
He spent all his time in bed now, Nora on his mind
Staring at the ceiling, waiting for his time
 
It was on a sunny morning, a few days before he went
The postman brought a letter that Nora’s sister sent
She said Nora knew her time was up when they met her at the train
She said before she passed away she was calling Patsy’s name
Patsy just asked for the door to be closed
He said that he wanted to be on his own