The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
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 lousy 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
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 lousy 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
Lyrics submitted by black_cow_of_death
The Sick Bed of Cúchulaínn Lyrics as written by Shane Patrick Lysaght Macgowan
Lyrics © DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Shane explained that he lived at his uncle's Irish pub in Essex for some time and this was written about a conglomeration of characters who went in there - pissheads basically - who had loads of tales from their pasts. One got syphillis in Cologne, one got drunk with Frank Ryan (the leader of the Irish members of the International Brigade who fought Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War) and one who was on a bender in the Euston Tavern (a pub near the London railway station), etc., etc. He also name-checks his local cemetery in North Tipperary, Ireland, Cloughprior. Throughout Shane's writing there are lots of mentions of places in this area.
I was really impressed by his mention of Frank Ryan. There aren't even many Irish people who know who he is so for Shane to mention him in one of his early songs could demonstrate what a good knowledge of Irish Republican history that his family had and how they brought him up to know this history. For the record, Frank Ryan not only was a republican leader in Ireland and the leader of the small Irish contingent that fought against the Fascists in Spain but he bizarrely also visited Nazi Germany during WW2 to see if there was any common ground between the IRA and Hitler.
Christy Moore's "Viva la Quinta Brigade" is all about the Irish volunteers in Spain and was released about a year before Rum, Sodomy and The Lash and so it could be that Shane had simply picked off the history from Christy Moore.
It's a bit more complicated than Frank Ryan visited Nazi Germany. <br /> <br /> He was captured in Spain in 1938 and held in prison in Madrid until 1940 when the Spanish handed him over to German Intelligence. He was brought to Berlin where he was reunited with Sean Russell, <br /> <br /> Russell was at that time Chief of Staff of the IRA and HE had gone to Berlin on behalf of the IRA to forge links with the Nazis. It's not as bizarre as it might seem, after all most of the guns for the 1916 rising came from the Kaiser's Germany, Wolfe Tone and Emmett got support from Napolean's France, essentially both sides were thinking along the lines of "my enemy's enemy is my friend". <br /> <br /> When Ryan arrived there was a plan underway to transport Russell back to Ireland to make contact with German operatives there, Ryan agreed to go with him, Russell died on the way and they decided to abort the mission and Ryan was brought back to Berlin where he lived until his death in 1944. <br /> <br /> He had reconciled his political differences with the IRA leadership (he split from the IRA in the 1930s to form a left wing party called Republican Congress) and was effectively the IRA representative in Germany from 1940-1944 although after 1942 when the US had entered the war the potential for an invasion of Ireland by either Britain or Germany had pretty much vanished so the usefulness of the IRA to the Nazis and the usefulness of the Nazis to the IRA reduced massively.
@Bigblue1894 @HorseQuack<br /> <br /> Great comment HorseQuack