JOHNNY JUMP UP
- Tadhg Jordan
I'll tell you a story that happened to me
One day as I went down to Youghal by the sea.
The sun it was bright and the day it was warm.
Says I, 'A quiet pint wouldn't do me no harm.'
I went in and I called for a bottle of stout.
Says the barman, 'I'm sorry, all the beer is sold out.
Try whiskey or Paddy, ten years in the wood.'
Says I, 'I'll try cider, I heard it was good.'
Chorus
Oh never, oh never, oh never again,
If I live to a hundred or a hundred and ten
For I fell to the ground and I couldn't get up
After drinking a jar of the Johnny Jump Up.
Now the next thing I met down in Youghal by the sea
Was a cripple on crutches and says he to me,
'I'm afraid of me life I'll get a belt of a car.
Won't you help me across to the Railways Men's bar?'
After drinking a quart of that cider so sweet
He threw down his crutches and he danced on his feet.
So we ordered two more and a toast we drank up
To the world's finest doctor, old Johnny Jump Up
After a while sure I felt well enough
Says I 'fill another, sure that cider's great stuff'
After drinking the third sure I made for the yard
And bumped into Brophy, the big civic guard.
'Come here to me, boy, don't you know I'm the law?'
So I upped with me fist and I shattered his jaw.
He fell on his back with his toes turned up
But 'twasn't I hit him, 'twas Johnny Jump Up.
I was brought up in court for being drunk in the street
After two pints of cider I was out on me feet
Said the guard testing me say these words if you can
'Around the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran'
When I managed that fine, sure he asked me to state
That I rattled me bottles outside Malachy's gate
But 'British constitution' fairly bottled me up
So I got fourteen days without Johnny Jump Up
I went up the Lee road a friend to see,
They call it the mad house in Cork by the Lee,
But when I got up there, I don't like to tell,
They had the poor soul so tied up in a cell.
Says he - 'Hello Jordan to see you I'm glad
Tell them I'm not crazy tell them I'm not mad
All that I had was a slug from a cup
Of that lunatic soup they call Johnny Jump Up'
A man died in Cork Union by the name of McNabb.
Well we washed him and laid him outside on a slab,
O'Connor came up then his measure to take,
And his wife took him home to a bloody fine wake.
'Twas about twelve o'clock when the beer it was high
The corpse he jumped up and said he with a sigh,
'I can't get to heaven, they won't let me up,
Till I bring them a jar of the Johnny Jump Up.'
So come all you young fellows and ladies as well
Beware of that stuff hat they brew in Clonmel
For God only knows whether you'll finish up
In a Madhouse or Gaol after Johnny Jump Up
