Hot Asphalt

Good evening all me jolly lads
I'm glad to see you're well
If you'll gather all around me now
The story I will tell
For I have a situation
And begorrah and begob
I can whisper I've a weekly wage
Of nineteen bob

It's twelve months come October
Since I left me native home
After helping in Killarney
Lads, to bring the harvest home

But now I wear a gansey
And around me waist a belt
I'm a gaffer at the pot
That makes the hot asphalt

We laid it in the hollows
And we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever
Then I swear I'll eat my hat
I've travelled up and down the world
But sure I've never felt
Any surface that's the equal
To the hot asphalt

The other night a peeler comes
And says to me, "Maguire
Would you kindly let me light me pipe
Down by your boiler fire?"
He planks himself right down
And flips his coat tails off to light
Says I, "Me decent man
You better go and mind your bite"

He ups and yells, "And down on you
I'm up to all your pranks
Don't I know you for a traitor
From the Tipperary ranks?"
Boys, I hit him from the shoulder
And I gave him such a belt
That I knocked him into the boiler
Full of the hot asphalt

We laid it in the hollows
And we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever
Then I swear I'll eat my hat
I've travelled up and down the world
But sure I've never felt
Any surface that's the equal
To the hot asphalt

We quickly dragged him out again
And there's him in the tub

And with soap and boiling water
We began to rub and scrub
But the devil went near to tar him up
He turned as hard as stone
And with every single rub
Sure you could hear the peeler groan
"I'm thinking", says O'Reilly
"That he's looking like a 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 'til 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
And if it doesn't last forever
Then I swear I'll eat my hat
I've travelled up and down the world
But sure I've never felt
Any surface that's the equal
To the hot asphalt

You may talk about your sailors
Ballad singers and the rest
Your shoemakers and tailors
That can please the ladies best
The only ones who know
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 Kelvin Road museum, me boys
He's dangling in his belt
As a monument to the Irish
Making the hot asphalt

We laid it in the hollows
And we laid it in the flat
And if it doesn't last forever
Then I swear I'll eat my hat
I've travelled up and down the world
But sure I've never felt
Any surface that's the equal
To the hot asphalt