The Humours Of Whiskey

Let your quacks and newspapers be cutting their capers

About curing the vapors the scratch and the gout

With their medical potions, their serums and their lotions

Upholding their notions, they're mighty put out.

Who can tell the true physic to all that's pathetic

And pitch to the divil, cramp, colic and spleen

You'll know it I think if you take a big drink

With your mouth to the brink of a jug of poteen

So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature

For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys

Oh what botheration, no dose in the nation

Can give consolation like poteen me boys.

No liquid cosmetic to lovers athletic

Or bodies pathetic can give such a bloom

As the sweet by the powers in the garden of flowers

Ever gave their own bowers such a darling perfume

And this liquid so rare if you willingly share

To be taking your hair when it's frizzled and dead

Oh the sod has the merit to yield the true spirit

So strong it will shake all the hairs from your head

Then stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature

For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys

Oh since its perfection, no doctor's direction

Can cleanse the complexion like poteen me boys

While a child in me cradle, me nurse with her ladle

Was filling my mouth with a notion of pap

When a drop from her bottle fell into my throttle

I stumbled and capered clean out of her lap

On the floor I lay crawlin' and screaming and bawling

'Til me mother and father were called to the fore

All sobbing and sighing they feared I was dying

But soon found I only was crying for more.

So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature

For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys

Oh lord how they'd chuckle if babes in their truckle

They only could suckle on poteen me boys

Through my youthful aggression, through times of depression

My childhood's impression still clung to my mind

And at school or at college the basis of knowledge

I never could gulp 'til with whiskey combined

And as older I'm growing times ever bestowin'

On Erin's potation, a flavor so fine

And how ere they may lecture on jove and his nectar

Itself is the only true liquid divine

So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature

For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys

Oh lord, 'tis the right thing for courting and fighting

There's nowt so exciting as poteen me boys.

Come guess me this riddle, what beats pipes and fiddle

What's hotter than mustard and milder than cream

What best wets your whistle, what's clearer than crystal

What's sweeter than honey and stronger than steam

What'll make the lame walk, what will make the dumb talk,

The elixir of life and philospher's stone

And what helped Mr. Brunnell to build the Thames Tunnel

Wasn't it poteen from ould Inisowen

So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature

For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys

Oh lord, it's no wonder, if lightning and thunder

Weren't made from the plunder of poteen me boys.

You maidens pathetic, with lovers athletic

For liquid cosmetic, you can't beat the drop

With a glow to your cheek, it will make your heart leap

It'll quiet a stallion or cure an old cob

At the mouth you would drool, be reduced to a fool

You'd kick up your heels and you'd peel to the buff

Then 'tis he'd be pathetic while you'd be athletic

If only you'd take a few drops of the stuff

So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature

For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys

For there's nothing like whiskey to make maidens frisky

It soon separates all the men from the boys.