獻給我最好的愛爾蘭朋友。

 

愛爾蘭，充滿聖人和學者的國度，但在澳洲的每個backpacker，你都看見醉酒的Irish，打架鬧事瘋狂行徑，我心目中音樂和文學，新興電子科技的愛爾蘭從沒見過，只有在豪放的irish bar喝一杯黑啤酒，才隱約感覺到愛爾蘭氣息。我和幾個澳洲朋友，百般思索到底怎樣才算是真正的澳洲文化，大家勉強得出來的結論，大概就是喝酒吧，而這喝酒文化，看來愛爾蘭的影響也不無貢獻，這又扯遠了，澳洲短短兩百年文化卻逐漸開始自成一格地相當出我意外，改天再來談。

 

總之在Pemberton，最好的朋友都是愛爾蘭人，至此我才認識了聰明、才華洋溢的愛爾蘭人，這麼多日日夜夜的談話，而我們狂歡的細膩的爆笑的悲傷的殘酷的回憶，這個遠在歐洲邊角的國家，對我有了不同的意義。當然，他們還是都是瘋狂醉酒的愛爾蘭人，以至於我每次聽到這首歌都覺得還是經典中的經典。給我最好的朋友們。
 

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 is 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