Well,
good evening all me jolly lads,
I hope to find you well.
If ye gather all around me,
now a story I will tell.
I've got a situation, and be gora and be gob,
I can whisper I've a weekly wage of nineteen bob.
It's twelve months since October,
since I left me native home,
After helping in Kilkenny boys to bring the harvest down.
Ah,
but now I wear a gansey,
and around me wears a belt,
I'm the gaffer in the squad that makes the hot gas felt.
We laid it in the hollows,
and we laid it in the flats,
And if it doesn't last forever,
sure I swear I laid me hat.
I've travelled up and down the world,
and sure I've never felt,
Any surface that was equal to the hot gas felt.
Well,
the other night a copper comes and says to me,
my boy,
Will you kindly let me light me pipe down by your boiler fire?
And he thanks me,
said to go down and work the heavy dope so late,
I says,
I'm a destined man,
you'd better go and mind your bed.
Well,
he ups and yells him down,
and you,
I'm up to all your pranks,
Sure I know you are a treader in the temporary ranks.
I hit him from the shoulder,
I gave him such a bell,
That he landed into the boiler full of the hot gas felt.
We laid it in the hollows,
and we laid it in the flats,
And if it doesn't last forever,
sure I swear I laid me hat.
I've travelled up and down the world,
and sure I've never felt,
Any surface that was equal to the hot gas felt.
You can talk about your sailors,
and your singers,
and the rest,
Your tailors and shoemakers that do make the ladies dress,
But the only ones that knows the way their pretty hearts emel,
Are the lads around the boiler making the hot gas felt.
With rubbing and with scrubbing,
sure I caught me dead the cold,
With scientific purposes, me body it was sold,
In the Kelton Hall Museum,
sure I'm dangling in me pelt,
As a monument to the Irish making the hot gas felt.
We laid it in the hollows,
and we laid it in the flats,
And if it doesn't last forever,
sure I swear I laid me hat.
I've travelled up and down the world,
and sure I've never felt,
Any surface that was equal to the hot gas felt.