Stick to the Craythur (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 poitin

So stick to the craythur 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 poitin 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 craythur 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 poitin 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 craythur 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 poitin 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 craythur 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 poitin 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 poitin from ould Inisowen

So stick to the craythur 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 poitin 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 craythur 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.

tune: Top of Cork Road (Father O'Flynn) Written by Joseph Lunn around 1825. Sometimes known as ''Paddy's Panacea''

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