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Good evening, all my jolly lads, I'm glad to find you well |
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If you'll gather all around me, now, the story I will tell |
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For I've got a situation and begorrah and begob |
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I can whisper all the weekly wage of nineteen bob |
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'Tis twelve months come October since I left me native home |
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After helping them Killarney boys to bring the harvest down |
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But now I wear the gansey and around me waist a belt |
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I'm the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt |
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Well, we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat |
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And if it doesn't last forever, sure I swear, I'll eat me hat |
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Well, I've wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt |
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Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt |
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The other night a copper comes and he says to me, McGuire |
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Would you kindly let me light me pipe down at your boiler fire? |
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And he planks himself right down in front, with hobnails up, till late |
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And says I, me decent man, you'd better go and find your bait |
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He ups and yells, I'm down on you, I'm up to all yer pranks |
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Don't I know you for a traitor from the Tipperary ranks? |
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Boys, I hit straight from the shoulder and I gave him such a belt |
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That I knocked him into the boiler full of hot asphalt |
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Well, we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat |
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And if it doesn't last forever, sure I swear, I'll eat me hat |
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Well, I've wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt |
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Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt |
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We quickly dragged him out again and we threw him in the tub |
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And with soap and warm water we began to rub and scrub |
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But devil the thing, it hardened and it turned him hard as stone |
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And with every other rub, sure you could hear the copper groan |
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I'm thinking, says O'Reilly, that he's lookin' like old Nick |
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And burn me if I am not inclined to claim him with me pick |
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Now, says I, it would be easier to boil him till he melts |
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And to stir him nice and easy in the hot asphalt |
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Well, we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat |
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And if it doesn't last forever, sure I swear, I'll eat me hat |
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Well, I've wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt |
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Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt |
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You may talk about yer sailor lads, ballad singers and the rest |
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Your shoemakers and your tailors but we please the ladies best |
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The only ones who know the way their flinty hearts to melt |
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Are the lads around the boiler making hot asphalt |
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With rubbing and with scrubbing, sure I caught me death of cold |
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For scientific purposes, me body it was sold |
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In the Kelvin grove museum, me boys, I'm hangin' in me pelt |
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As a monument to the Irish, making hot asphalt |
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Well, we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat |
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And if it doesn't last forever, sure I swear, I'll eat me hat |
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Well, I've wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt |
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Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt |
