ARTIST: Trad and Anon TITLE: Stick to the Craythur Lyrics and Chords [As performed by The Green Fields of America] Let your quacks and newspapers be cutting their capers 'Bout curing the vapors, the scratch and the gout With their medical potions, their serums and lotions Upholding their notions they're mighty put out Who can tell the true physic to all that's 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 / A - - - / D A E - / A - - - / D A E A / / E - A - / E - A E A / A - - - / D A E A / So stick to the craythur the best thing in nature For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys Oh what botheration, no dose in the nation Can give consolation like poteen me boys / E - A - / E - A E A / A - - - / D A E A / As a child in the cradle, me nurse with her ladle Was filling me mouth with a notion of pap When a drop from the bottle fell into me throttle I capered and scrambled clean out of her lap On the floor I lay crawlin' and screaming and bawling 'Til me father and mother 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 craythur 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, and times of depression My childhood impression still clung to my mind And at school or at college the basis of knowledge I never could gulp 'til with whiskey combined And as older I'm growing, time's ever bestowin' On Erin's potation, a flavor so fine And howe'er they may lecture on Jove and his nectar Itself is the only true liquid divine So stick to the craythur 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 nought so exciting as poteen me boys Come guess me this riddle, what beats pipes and fiddle What's hotter than mustard and milder 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'll make the dumb talk The elixir of life and philosopher's stone And what helped Mr. Brunnell to dig the Thames Tunnel Sure, wasn't it poteen from old Inisowen So stick to the craythur the best thing in nature For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys Oh lord, 'tis no wonder if lightning and thunder Weren't made from the plunder of poteen me boys Now, ye maidens pathetic, with lovers athletic For liquid cosmetic, you can't beat the drop With a glow to your cheek, it'll make your heart leap It would whiten a stallion or cure an old cob From the mouth you would drool, be reduced to a fool You'd kick up your heels and you'd peel to the buff And 'tis you'd be athletic while he'd be pathetic If only you'd take a few drops of the stuff So stick to the craythur the best thing in nature For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys For there's nothing like whiskey to make maidens frisky It soon separates all the men from the boys
Irish homemade whiskey goes by many names - most commonly known as Poteen (pronounced po-cheen), but also the Craythur, the drop, the stuff, itself, the pure and about 50 million other names.