Formerly in the Irish Packet
I’ll tell you a story that happened to me
One day as I went down to Yule-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 to the barman, I said “Give me a stout.”
Said the barman “I’m sorry, all the beer ‘tis sold out
Try whiskey, try sherry, ten years in the wood”
Says I, “I’ll try cider, I’ve heard that it’s good”
Oh never, oh never, oh never again
If I live to a hundred or a hundred and ten
I fell to the ground and I couldn’t get up
After drinking a pint of that Johnny Jump Up
After leaving the pub I went back to the yard
When I bumped into Brolfy, the big civic guard
“Come here to me, boy, don’t you know I’m the law”
I upped with my fist and I shattered his jaw
He fell to the ground with his knees doubled up
But it wasn’t I’d hit him, ‘twas the Johnny Jump Up
And the next man I met out in Yule-by-the-Sea
Was an old man on crutches, and he said to me
“I fear for me life I’ll be hit by a car
Won’t you help me across to the railwaymans’ bar?”
After a drinking a sip of that cider so sweet
He threw down his crutches and danced in the street
I went down the Lee Road, a friend for to see
They call it the jailhouse in Cork-by-the-Lee
And when I got up there, the truth I should tell
They had the poor bugger locked up in his cell
Said the guard testing him, “say these words if you can:
‘Around the ragged rock, the ragged rascal ran’”
“Tell them I’m no danger, tell them I’m not bad
It was only a drop of the creature I had”
A man died in the Union by the name of McNabb
They washed him and laid him outside on a slab
And after the coroner his measurements did take
His wife took him home for a bloody fine wake
‘Twas about twelve o’clock and the beer it was high
The corpse he sat up, and he says with a sigh
“I can’t get to Heaven, they won’t let me up
’Til I bring them a pint of that Johnny Jump Up”