Irish traditional song lyrics — collected by Beer Belly Band.
(Traditional)
Good evening all me jolly lads, I’m glad to find you well
If you gather all around, sure a story I will tell
For I’ve got a situation and begorrah and begob
I can whisper I’ve the weekly wage of nineteen bob
Its twelve months since October that I left me native home
After helpin’ in Killarney to cut harvest down,
But, now I wear a gansey and around me waist a belt
I’m the gaffer of the squads that makes the hot asphalt.
Chorus:
We laid it in the hollows, and we laid it the flats
And if it doesn’t last forever, I swear I’ll ate me hat
I’ve traveled up and down the world, and sure I never felt
Any surface that was equal, to the hot asphalt
Well one day a copper comes to me and he says to me, “‘McGuire,
Will you kindly let me light me pipe, down at your boiling’ fire?”
Well he planks himself right down on there his hobnails up the heat
And sez I, Me decent man, you’d better go and mind your beat
He ups and sez, I’m down on you and up to all your pranks
Don’t I know you for a traitor from the Tipperary ranks
Boys I struck right from the shoulder and I gave him such a belt
That he landed in the boiler full of hot asphalt.
Chorus
Well we quickly pulled him out again and we placed him in a tub,
And with soap and heated water we began to rub and scrub.
But the divil the thing it hardened, it turned as hard as stone,
And with every other rub, sure you could hear the copper groan.
I’m thinkin’ sez O’Reilly that he’s lookin’ like old Nick
And burn me if I’m not inclined to cleave him with me pick
Now sez I it would be easier to boil him till he melts
And to stir him nice easy into the hot asphalt
Chorus
You can talk about your sailor lads, ballad singers and the rest
Your tailors and shoemakers, who please the ladies best,
The only ones who the way the flinty hearts to melt
Are the lads around the fire makin’ the hot asphalt
With rubbin’ and with scrubbin’, he caught his death of cold,
And for scientific purposes his body has been sold.
In the Kelvingrove Museum now he’s hanging by the belt,
As a monument to the Irish and the hot asphalt.
Chorus