The Parting Glass lyrics

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“The Parting Glass” is an Irish traditional song, often sung at the end of a gathering of friends. It was allegedly the most popular song sung in both Scotland and Ireland before Robert Burns wrote “Auld Lang Syne”.
The Irish song is thoughtful and quiet, though the old Scottish version, “Good Night and Joy Be With You All”, is quite lively and uses roughly the same melody, an old type of tune called the Scots Measure.
The celebrated Irish folk song collector, Colm O Lochlainn, pointed out that “The Parting Glass” shares its melody with Sweet Cootehill Town. This is another traditional farewell song, this time involving a man leaving Ireland to go to America.
The song was printed as a broadside in the 1770s, and first appeared in book form in “Scots Songs” by Herd. An early version of the song is sometimes attributed to Sir Alex Boswell. The Irish version is usually considered more suitable for modern listeners. It is also the song that the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem would often sing to finish off their concerts.
The song is doubtless older than its 1770 appearance in broadside, as it was recorded in the Skene Manuscript, a collection of Scottish airs written at various dates between 1615 and 1635. It was known at least as early as 1605, when a portion of the first stanza was written in a farewell letter, as a poem now known as “Armstrong's Goodnight”, by one of the Border Reivers executed that year for the murder in 1600 of Sir John Carmichael, Warden of the Scottish West March.