| 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 the Killarney boys to bring the harvest down. |
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But now I wear the geansai 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 bate!" |
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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 ... |
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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 Ould 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 'asier to boil him till he melts, |
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and to stir him nice and 'asy in the hot asphalt." |
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Well, we laid it in a hollows ... |
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You may talk about yer sailorlads, 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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and for scientific purposes me body it was sold, |
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In the Kelvingrove museum me boys, I'm hangin' in me pelt, |
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As a monument to the Irish mixing hot asphalt! |
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Well, we laid it in a hollows ... |
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