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
So says I, “A quiet pint wouldn't do me no harm.”

I went in and 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 hear it was good."

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 quart of that Johnny Jump Up.

After lowering the third I made straight for the yard,
Where I bumped into Brophy, the big Civic Guard.
“Come here to me, boy, don't you know I'm the law?”
Well, I upped with my fist and shattered his jaw.

He fell to the ground with his knees doubled up
But it wasn't I hit him, 'twas Johnny Jump Up.
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 be hit by a car.
Won't you help me across to the Railwaymen's Bar?”
After drinking a quart of this cider so sweet,
He threw down his crutches and he danced on the street.

I went up the Lee Road a friend for to see,
They call it the Madhouse in Cork by the Lee.
But when I got up there, the truth I do tell,
They had the poor so-and-so locked up in a cell.

Said the guard, testing him “Say these words if you can:
‘Around the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran.'”
“Tell them I'm not crazy, tell them I'm not mad
It was only a slug of the bottle I had.”

A man died in the Union by the name of McNabb.
We washed him and laid outside on the slab.
And after O'Connor his measurements did take,
His wife took him home to a bloody fine wake.

About twelve o'clock and the beer it was high
When the corpse he sits up and says with a sigh:
“I can't go to heaven, they won't let me up
Till I bring them a quart of the Johnny-jump-up.”