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