Let your quacks and newspapers be cuttin' their capers
And curing the vapors the scratch and the gout
With their medical potions, their pills and their lotions
Upholding their notions, they're mighty put out.
You can tell the true physic of all things prophetic
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 cratur' 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.

No liquid cosmetic to lovers athletic
Or ladies pathetic can give such a bloom
As the sweet by the pow’rs in the garden of flow’rs
Ever gave their own bow’rs such a darling perfume
And this liquid so rare if you willingly share
To be taking your hair when it's frizzled and dead
Oh the sod has the merit to yield the true spirit
So strong it will shake all the hairs from your head

Then stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh since its perfection, no doctor's direction
Can cleanse the complexion like poteen me boys

As a child in me cradle, me nurse from her ladle
Was filling my mouth with a notion of pap
When a drop from her bottle fell into my throttle
I stumbled and capered clean out of her lap
On the floor I lay crawlin' and screamin’ and bawling’
Me mother and father were called to the fore
All sobbing and sighing they feared I was dying
But found I was only crying for more.

So stick to the cratur' 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 might only suckle on poteen me boys

Through my youthful aggression, through times of depression
My childhood's 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 times ever bestowin'
On Erin's potation, a flavor so fine
And how e’er they may lecture on Jove and his nectar
Itself is the only true liquid divine

So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh lord, 'tis the right thing for courtin’ and fightin’
There's nowt so excitin’ 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 will make the dumb talk,
The elixir of life and philospher's stone
And what helped Mr. Brunel to build the Thames Tunnel
Well wasn't it poteen from ould Inishowen

So stick to the cratur' the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Ah sometimes I wonder if lightning and thunder
Were only the plunder of poteen me boys.