Hot Asphalt Good evening all my joly lads, I'm glad to see you well If you gather now all around me now the story I will tell For I've got a situation and begorah and begob I can't whisper I've the weekly wage of nineteen bob, 'Tis twelve months come October since I left my native home After helping in Killarney, boys,to bring the harvest down But now I wear the geansai and around me waist a belt I'm the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt Chorus:- Well we laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat And if it doesn't last for ever sure I sware I'll eat me hat Well, I've wandered up and down the world but 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, Will you kindly let me light my pipe down at your boiler fire?" And he planks himself right down in front, with obnails up, till late, And says I "My dacent man, you'd better go and find your bate" He ups and yells, "I'm down on you, I'm up to all yer pranks, Don't I know you for a traitor from the Tipperary ranks?" Boys, I hit straight from the showlder and I gave him such a belt, That I knocked him into the boiler full of hot asphalt. We quickly dragged him out again and we through him in the tub, And with soap and warm water we began to rub and scrub, But devil the thing, it hardened and it turned him hard and stone And with every other rub sure you could hear the copper groan. "I'm thinking" says O'Reilly, "that he's lookin' like Ould Nick, And burn me if I'm not inclined to claim him with me pick" "Now" says I, "it would be easier to boil him till he melts, And to stir him nice and easy in the hot Asphalt." You may talk about yer sailorlads, ballads singers and the rest, You shoemakers and your tailors but we please the ladies best. The only ones who know the way their flinty hearts to melt Are the lads around the boiler making hot asphalt. With rubbing and with scrubbing sure I caught me death of cold, And for scientific purposes me body it was sold, In the Kelvingrove museum me boys, I'm hangin' in me pelt, As a monument to the Irish mixing hot asphalt.