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Singer Tom Lenihan from Miltown Malbay at the Kilrush Fleadh in 1967. Tom also called the song "Paddy's Panacea."
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"Let your quacks and newspapers be cuttin' their capers
And curing the vapors the scratch and the gout
With their medical [magical] potions, their pills [serums] and their lotions
Upholding their notions, they're mighty put out.
Who [You] can tell the true physic of all things prophetic [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 poteen
So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh what moderation gives hope to a nation
Or brings consolation like poteen me boys.
[Oh what botheration, no dose in the nation
Can give consolation like poteen me boys. ]
No liquid cosmetic to lovers athletic
Or bodies [ladies] pathetic can give such a bloom
As the sweet by the powers in the garden of flowers
E'er 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 cratur' 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 poteen me boys
As a child in me cradle, me nurse with [from] her ladle
Was filling my [swillin her] mouth with a notion of pap [Pep]
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 cratur' 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 poteen 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 [bolus]* 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 cratur' 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 poteen me boys.
Come guess me this riddle, what beats pipes and fiddle
What's hotter than mustard and milder [wilder] 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. Brunel to build the Thames Tunnel
Wasn't it poteen from ould Inishowen
So stick to the cratur' 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 poteen me boys."