My name is bold Morgan McCarthy from Trim,
My relations all died except one brother Jim;
He is gone a-sojering out to Cow Bull,
I dare say he’s laid low with a kick in the skull.
But let him be dead or be living
A prayer for his corpse I’ll be giving,
To send him soon home or to heaven,
For he left me his darlin’ stick.
If that stick had a tongue it could tell you some tales,
How it battered the countenances of the O’Neil’s;
It made bits of skull fly about in the air,
And it’s been the promoter of fun at each fair.
For I swear by the toenail of Moses
It has often broke bridges of noses
Of the faction that dared to oppose us –
It’s the darlin’ kippeen of a stick.
The last time I used it ‘twas on Patrick’s Day,
Larry Fagan and I got into a shilley;
We went on a spree to the fair of Athboy,
Where I danced, and when done, I kissed Kate McEvoy.
Then her sweetheart went out for his cousin,
And by Jabers! He brought in a dozen;
A doldhrum they would have knocked us in
It I hadn’t the taste of a stick.
War was the word when the factions came in,
And, to pummel us well, they peeled off their skin;
Like a Hercules there I stood for the attack,
And the first that came up I sent on his back.
Then I shoved out the eye of Pat Clancy,
(for he once humbugged sister Nancy);
in the meantime poor Kate took a fancy
to myself and a bit of a tick.
I smathered her sweetheart until he was black,
She then tipped me the wink – we were off in a crack;
We went to a house t’other end of the town,
And we cheered up our spirits by letting some down.
When I got her snug into a corner
And the whiskey beginning to warm her;
She told me her sweetheart was an informer,
Oh, ‘twas then I said prayers for my stick.
We got whiskificated to such a degree,
For support my poor Kate had to lean against me;
I promised to see her safe to her abode,
By the tarnal, we fell clean in the mud on the road.
We were roused by the magistrate’s order
Before we could get a toe further –
Surrounded by peelers for murther,
Was myself and my innocent stick.
When the trial came on, Kate swore to the fact
That before |I set to I was decently whacked;
And the Judge had a little more feeling than sense –
He said what I done was in my defence.
But one chap swore again me, named Carey,
(Though that night he was in Tipperary);
He’d swear a coal porter was a canary
To transport myself and my stick.
When I was acquitted I leaped from the dock,
And the gay fellows all round me did flock;
I’d a pain in my shoulder, I shook hands so often,
For the boys all imagined I’d see my own coffin.
I went and bought a gold ring, sir,
And Kate to the priest I did bring, sir;
So next night you come, I will sing, sir,
The adventure of my and my stick