Humours of Whiskey

Let your quacks and newspapers be cutting their capers
And curing the vapors the scratch and the gout
With their medical potions, their pills and their lotions
Upholding their notions, they're mighty put out.
Who can tell the true physic on all things pathetic
And pitch to the divil, cramp, colic and spleen
You'll find that I think if you take a big drink
With your mouth to the brink of a jug of poteen
Then stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh what botheration, no dose in the nation
Can bring consolation like poteen me boys.
No liquid cosmetic to lovers athletic
Or ladies pathetic can bring such a bloom
As the sweet by the powers in the garden of flowers
Ever gave their own bowers such a darling perfume
And this liquid so rare if you are willingly share
To be taking your hair when it's frizzled and dead
Oh the sod has the merit to yield the true spirit
So strong it will shake all the hairs from your head
Then stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh since its perfection, no doctor's direction
Can cleanse the complexion like poteen me boys
As a child in me cradle, me nurse with her ladle
Was filling my mouth with a notion of pap
When a drop from her bottle fell into me throttle
I capered and scrambled right out of her lap
On the floor I lay crawlin' and screaming and bawling
'Til father and mother soon came to the fore
All sobbing and sighing they feared I was dying
They found I was only crying for more.
Then stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh lord how they'd chuckle if babes in their truckle
Could only be suckle on poteen me boys
Through youthful aggression, and times of depression
My childhood's impression still clung to me mind
And at school and in college the basis of knowledge
I never could gulp 'til with whiskey combined
And as older I'm growing times ever bestowin'
On Erin's potation, a flavor so fine
And how ere they may lecture on Jove and his nectar
Itself is the only true liquid divine
Then stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh lord, it's the right thing for courting and fighting
There's nowt so exciting as poteen me boys.
Come guess me this riddle, what beats pipes and fiddle
What's hotter than mustard and milder than cream
What best wets your whistle, what's clearer than crystal
Smoother than honey and stronger than steam
What will make the dumb talk, what'll make the lame walk
The elixir of life and philosopher's stone
And what helped Mr. Brunnell to dig the Thames Tunnel
Wasn't it poteen from ould Inisowen
Then stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh lord, it's no wonder, if lightning and thunder
Was made from the plunder of poteen me boys.