The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn
The Pogues
Rum Sodomy & The Lash (1985)

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your
head
There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their
hands
You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign
lands

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in
Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all
alone
Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the
Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a
prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the
chair

And in the Euston Tavern you screamed it was your shout
But they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows
out
They took you out into the street and kicked you in the
brains
So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all
again
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a
prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the
chair

You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees
howl
There was lazy drunken bastards singing Billy in the bowl
They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch
So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the
church

Now you'll sing a song of liberty for blacks and paks and
jocks
And they'll take you from this dump you're in and stick you
in a box
Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the
ground
But you'll stick your head back out and shout "We'll
have another round"
At the graveside of Cuchulainn we'll kneel around and
pray
And God is in His heaven, and Billy's down by the bay