STOUT - Hot Asphalt Lyrics

Good evening all me jolly lads, I'm glad to find you well
If you'll gather all around me now me story I will tell
For I've got a situation and begorrah and begob
I can whisper I got a weekly wage of nineteen bob
'Tis twelve months come October since I left me native home
After helping in Killarney boys to bring the harvest down
But now I wear the geansaí and around me waist a belt
I'm the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt

Well, we laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever oh 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?"
He planks himself right down by me with hobnails up till late
Says I "Me decent man, you'd better go and mind your beat."
He ups and yells "I'm down on you and I'm up to all your 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 he fell into the mixer full of the hot asphalt

Well, we laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever oh 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

We quickly pulled him out again and we threw him in the tub
And with soap and boiling water we began to rub and scrub
But divil the thing it hardened and it turning hard as stone
And with every other rub sure you could hear the copper groan
"I'm thinking" says O'Reilly "that he's lookin' like old Nick
And burn me if I'm not inclined to cleave him with me pick"
"Now" says I "it would be easier to boil him till he melts
And to stir him nice and easy into the hot asphalt."

Well, we laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever oh 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

You may talk about your sailor lads, ballad singers and the rest
Your shoemakers and your tailors but to please the ladies best
Ah well, the only ones who know the ways their flinty hearts to melt
Are the lads behind the mixer making hot asphalt
With rubbing and with scrubbing sure I caught me death from cold
And 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 the hot asphalt

Well, we laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever oh 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

Well, we laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever oh 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