The Sickbed of Cuuhulainn

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed

There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head

There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands

You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne

And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone

Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid

And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids

At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer

And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the chair

And in the Euston Tavern you screamed it was your shout

But they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows out

They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains

So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again

At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer

And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the chair

You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl

There was lousy drunken bastards singing "Billy In The Bowl"

They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch

So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church

Now you'll sing a song of liberty for blacks and paks and jocks

And they'll take you from this dump you're in and stick you in a box

Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground

But you'll stick your head back out and shout "We'll have another round"

At the graveside of Cuchulainn we'll kneel around and pray

And God is in His heaven, and Billy's down by the bay