Let your quacks and newspapers be cutting their capers
About curing the vapors, the scratch and the gout
With their medical potions, their serums and lotions
Ochone in 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

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

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 Inishowen

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 quieten 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