Luke's Gravestone Cold as the wind That carried your ghost. Silent as the songs That remain unsung. Lonely As An Echo From The Jail of Cluain Meala. Solitary As Your Silhouette Going Home By Railings After Closing Time. Upright And defiant As Your Stance When You Challenged The Puppets Of Power "For What Died The Sons Of Roisin!" Like Your Voice... Unweathered By Time This Granite Gravestone. Your Epitaph - A Simple Claim: Between The Two Great Mysteries, Your Place, Your Name. Luke Kelly 1940 1984 Dubliner by john Sheahan
Grew up in the 80s my dad was an electrical contractor the men that worked for him could lift bags of cement one on each hand with the fingertips in their 70s while the young men could barely lift a bag. They were treated like crap their skills died with them so glad I knew them. Men from the 1800s were the shit
Ah, the good old Derry mythology. The men unemployed bringing up the kids etc.etc. Nah - they got their bru and spent the days in the pubs and the bookies.The kids almost threw themselves up - and if it wasn't for the strength of Derry women the place would have been far more feckless.
Lyrics: Ah well Good evening all my jolly lads I’m glad to find you well If you’ll gather all around me now the story I will tell For I’ve got a situation and begorrah and begob I can whisper I have a weekly wage of nineteen bob Tis twelve months come October since I left me native home After helping them Killarney boys to bring the harvest down But now I wear the gansey and around me waist a belt I’m the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt Well we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat And if it doesn’t last forever sure I swear I’ll eat me hat Well I’ve wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt The other night a copper comes and he says to me McGuire! Would you kindly let me light me pipe down at your boiler fire? And he planks himself right down in front with hobnails up till late And says I me decent man you’d better go and find your bait He ups and yells I’m down on you I’m up to all yer pranks Don’t I know you for a traitor from the Tipperary ranks? Boys I hit straight from the shoulder and I gave him such a belt That I knocked him into the boiler full of hot asphalt We laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat and if it doesn’t last forever sure I swear I’ll eat me hat well I’ve wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt We quickly pulled him out again and we threw him in the tub And with soap and warm water we began to rub and scrub But devil the thing it hardened and it turned him hard as stone And with every other rub sure you could hear the copper groan I’m thinking, says O’Reilly that he’s lookin like old Nick And burn me if I am not inclined to claim him with me pick Now says I it would be easier to boil him till he melts And to stir him nice and easy in the hot asphalt Well we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat And if it doesn’t last forever sure I swear I’ll eat me hat Well I’ve wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt You may talk about yer sailor lads ballad singers and the rest Your shoemakers and your tailors but we please the ladies best The only ones who know the way their flinty hearts to melt Are the lads around the boiler making hot asphalt With rubbing and with scrubbing sure I caught me death of cold For scientific purposes me body it was sold In the Kelvin grove museum, me boys I’m hangin in me pelt As a monument to the Irish making hot asphalt Well we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat And if it doesn’t last forever sure I swear I’ll eat me hat Well I’ve wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt Any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt!
Think this was his last recording before he passed. Rest in Heavenly peace Luke I'm sure you and the Lads are still belting ballads out in the skies. 🙏 🕊 🕯
I remember this was sung triumphantly by the Irish gangsters after the Italian wedding robbery in the getaway car in William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977). Great tune.
So beautiful. Every child, every person, is a treasure -- not for the great feats we can accomplish, but for that which we are and what we do with what and who we are. The simplest among is a reminder that we come to grace and the Giver of grace as children in utmost simplicity. We are awesomely, wonderfully made - each of us and we are gifts to one another and to the God who gave us life.
