Oh, come listen all ye jolly lads, I'm glad to find you well
And kindly gather round me and a story will tell
For I've got a situation and begorrah and begob
I can whisper, I've a weekly wage of nineteen bob

It's twelve months from October since I left me native home
After helping the Killarney boys to bring their harvest home
But now I wear a gansey and around me waist a belt
I'm the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt

We laid it in the hollows and we laid it in the flat
And if it doеsn't last forever, sure I swеar I'll eat me hat
I've wandered up and down this world, but sure, I never felt
Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt

Well, the other night, the copper comes and says to me, "McGuire,"
"Would you kindly let me light me pipe down by your boiler fire?"
He plonks himself right down and puts his hobnails up the grate
Then says I, "me decent man, you'd better go and mind your bait"

He ups at me and downs at me, I'm up to all your pranks
"Don't I know yer boiler came up from the Tipperary ranks?"
Well, I hit him on 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, sure I swear I'll eat me hat
I've wandered up and down this world, but sure, I never felt
Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt
Oh, we quickly pulled him out again and threw him in the tub
And with soap and warm water we began to rub and scrub
But the devil, the thing had hardened and had turned as hard as stone
And with every other rub, sure you could hear the copper moan

"I'm thinking," says O'Reilly, "that he's looking like the ol' Nick
And if the devil the thing has hardened, sure I'll claim him with me pick"
Says I, "it would be easier to boil him till 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, sure I swear I'll eat me hat
I've wandered up and down this world, but sure, I never felt
Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt

Now me workin' days are over, boys, I've lost me bloody health
And with neither pick nor shovel, sure a cruel fate I was dealt
But I never knew a better way that my old heart would melt
With the boys around the boiler making the hot asphalt

With rubbin' and with scrubbin', sure I caught 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 the hot asphalt

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
I've wandered up and down this world, but sure, I never felt
Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt