In the tavern one night we were sitting -
I'm sure 'twas the last week in March -
From our drinks we were cautiously sipping
To ensure that our throats didn't parch.
We played music both lively and dacent
To bolster our spirits and hopes,
And we gazed at the females adjacent
And remarked on their curves and their slopes.

Till this gent wandered into the session
And decided to join in the tunes;
Without waiting to ask our permission
He took out a big pair of soup-spoons.
Our teeth in short time we were gritting
As he shook and he rattled his toys,
And the company's eardrums were splitting
With his ugly mechanical noise.

Hopping spoons off our heads to provoke us
He continued the music to kill;
Whether hornpipes, slow airs or Polkas
They all sounded like pneumatic drills.
Then he asked could we play any faster,
As his talent he wished to display,
With a grin on the face of the bastard
Like the cat when she teases her prey.

Our thoughts at this stage were quite bloody
And politely we asked him to quit;
We suggested s part of his body
Where those spoons might conveniently fit.
This monster we pestered and hounded,
We implored him with curses and tears,
But in vain our appeals they resounded
In the desert between his two ears.

When I went out the back on a mission,
He arrived as I finished my leak;
He says "This is a mighty fine session,
I think I'll come here every week".
When I heard this, with rage I was leppin',
And this torture no longer I'd take:
I looked 'round for a suitable weapon
To silence this damned rattlesnake.

Outside towards the yard I did sally
To find something to vanquish my foe:
I grabbed hold of a gentleman's Raleigh
With fifteen-speed gear and dynamo.
Then I battered this musical vandal
As I shouted with furious cries
"My dear man your last spoon you have handled,
Say your prayers and await your demise!"

With the bike I assailed my tormentor
As I swung in a frenzy of hate,
Till his bones and his skull were in splinters
And his health in a very poor state.
And when I was no longer able,
I forestalled any last minute hitch
By removing the gear-changing cable
And strangling that son-of-a-bitch.

At the end of my onslaught ferocious
I stood back and surveyed the scene;
The state of the place was atrocious,
Full of fragments of man and machine.
At the spoons-player's remains I was staring,
His condition was surely no joke,
For his nose was clogged with ball-bearings
And his left eye was pierced by a spoke.

At the sight I was feeling quite squeamish,
So I washed up and went back inside;
Then I drank a half gallon of Beamish,
As my throat in the struggle had dried.
Unpolluted by cutlery's clatter
The music was pleasant and sweet;
For the rest of the night nothing mattered
But the tunes and the tapping of feet.

At an inquest, the following September,
The coroner said "I conclude
The deceased by himself was dismembered
As no sign could be found of a feud.
And the evidence shows that the fact is,
As reported to me by the Guards
He indulged in the foolhardy practice
Of trick-cycling in public house yards".

So if you're desperately keen on percussion,
And to join in the tunes you can't wait;
Be you Irishman, German, or Russian,
Take a lesson from his awful fate.
If your spoons are the best silver-plated,
Or the humblest of cheap stainless steel,
When you play them abroad, you'll be hated,
So just keep them for eating your meals.

0 9553112 0 9
978 0 9553112 0 8

Text © Con O'Drisceoil 2006. All other material © Craft Recordings 2006.
Music settings & layout - Terry Moylan.

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