Musical Map of Newfoundland and Labrador

The earliest known publication of the text of The Star of Logy Bay is in a 1902 songster by St. John's songwriter and ballad collector James Murphy. Its composer is not known. At least three different melodies have been recorded for the song, the first by Greenleaf in 1929, a second in the 1940 Gerald S. Doyle songster, and the present melody which was recorded by the McNulty Family. The multiple melodies suggest a broadside origin for the song, as broadsides were generally published without music and consequently singers set their texts to older tunes they knew or composed new tunes to fit the words.

Ye ladies and ye gentlemen,
I pray you lend an ear
While I locate the residence
Of a lovely charmer fair.
The curling of her yellow locks
First stole my heart away,
And her place of habitation
Is down in Logy Bay.

It was on a summer's evening
This little place I found.
I met her aged father,
Who did me sore confound;
Saying: "If you address my daughter,
I'll send her far away,
And she never will return again
While you're in Logy Bay."

How could you be so cruel as
To part me from my love?
Her tender heart beats in her breast
as constant as a dove.
Oh, Venus was no fairer,
Nor the lovely month of May,
May Heaven above shower down its love
On the Star of Logy Bay.

'Twas on the very next evening,
He went to St. John's town
And engaged for her a passage
In a vessel outward bound.
He robbed me of my heart's delight,
and sent her far away;
And he left me here downhearted
for the Star of Logy Bay.

Oh, now I'll go a-roaming;
I can no longer stay.
I'll search the wide world over
in every country.
I'll search in vain thro' France and Spain,
Likewise America,
'Til I will sight my heart's delight
the Star of Logy Bay.

Now to conclude and finish,
The truth to you I'll tell.
Between Torbay and Outer Cove,
'Tis there my love did dwell-
The finest girl e'er graced our Isle,
So every one did say,
May Heaven above send down its love
On the Star of Logy Bay.