Hot Sand

de Traditional

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've got a situation and begorah and begob
I can whisper I've the weekly wage of nineteen bob
'Tis tvelwe months come October since I left me native home
After helping in Killarney, boys, to bring the harvest down
But now I wear a geansai 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 sure I swear 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,
Would you kindly let me light me pipe down at your boiler fire?"
And he planks himself right down in front, with hobnails up, till late
And says I, "Me 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 shoulder 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 threw 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 as stone
And with every other rub sure you could hear the copper groan
"I'm thinkin'", 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, ballad singers and the rest
Your 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 making hot asphalt