Hot Asphalt

Good evening all you jolly lads, I'm glad to see you're well.
If you gather all around me and the story I will tell.
For I have the situation in Begorrah and Begob.
I can whisper I've the weekly wage of nineteen bob.
It's twelve months since October since I've left me native home.
After helping in Killarney lads to bring the harvest down.
But now, I wear a gangee and around my waist a belt.
I'm the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt.

We laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat.
If it doesn't last forever, then I swear I'll eat my hat.
I've traveled up and down the world but sure I've never felt.
Any surface that's been equal to the hot asphalt.

The other night a peeler comes and says to me, "McGuire,
Would you kindly let me light your pipe down by your broiler fire?"
He planks himself right down and flips his coat tails up to light.
Says I, "My decent man, you'd better go and mind your bite."
He ups and yells, "I'm down on you, I'm up to all your pranks!
Don't you know I am a traitor for the temporary ranks?"
Boys, I hit him in the shoulder and I gave him such a belt.
That I knocked him into the broiler full of the hot asphalt.

We laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat.
If it doesn't last forever, then I swear I'll eat my hat.
I've traveled up and down the world but sure I've never felt.
Any surface that's been equal to the hot asphalt.

We quickly dragged him out again and doused him in the tub.
And with soap and boiling water, we began to rub and scrub.
But the devil was near, the tar came off, he turned as hard as stone.
And with every single rupture, you could hear the peeler groan.
"I'm thinking," says Old Riley. "That he's looking like Old Nick.
And burn me if I'm not inclined to maim him with me pick."
Well says I, "It would be easier to boil him till he melts.
And to stir him nice and easy in the hot asphalt."

We laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat.
If it doesn't last forever, then I swear I'll eat my hat.
I've traveled up and down the world but sure I've never felt.
Any surface that's been equal to the hot asphalt.

You may talk about your sailors, ballad singers and the rest.
Your shoemakers and tailors that would please the ladies best.
The only ones who knows the way their pretty hearts to melt.
Are the lads around the boiler making the hot asphalt.
With the rubbing and the scrubbing sure, he caught his death of cold.
And for scientific purposes, his body it was sold.
In the Kelvingrove Museum me boys, he's dangling in his pelt.
As a monument to the Irish making the hot asphalt.

We laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat.
If it doesn't last forever, then I swear I'll eat my hat.
I've traveled up and down the world but sure I've never felt.
Any surface that's been equal to the hot asphalt.