Em G D
Good evening all my jolly lads I'm glad to find you well
Em D
If you'll gather all around me now the story I will tell
Em G D
For I've got a situation and begorrah and begob
Em D Em
I can whisper all the weekly wage of nineteen bob
G G
Tis twelve months come October since I left me native home
Em D
After helping the Killarney boys to bring the harvest down
Em G D
But now I wear the geansai and around me waist a belt
Em D Em
I'm the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt
CHORUS:
G G
Well we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat
Em D
And if it doesn't last forever sure I swear I'll eat me hat
Em G D
Well I've wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt
Em D Em
any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt
(Follow the same chord pattern...)
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 decent 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
(CHORUS)
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 thinking says O'Reilly that he's lookin' like Ould Nick
And burn me if I am not inclined to claim him with me pick
Now says I it would be 'asier to boil him till he melts
and to stir him nice and 'asy in the hot asphalt
(CHORUS)
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 mixing hot asphalt
(CHORUS)