I’ll take you to Belfast to Larne and Coleraine,
I’ll bring you to Newry and right back again.
I’ll show you sickness, violence and plagues,
But the worst thing I’ll show you is too many Taigs.
 
We’ll sit in the courtroom and hear cases tried,
Where injustice and crime can find no place to hide.
And the guilty get sentences both small and big,
But you know it’s a Fenian there under the wig.
 
I’ll bring you to lectures where students are
taught
And knowledge and wisdom are earnestly sought.
And the young from the classroom to adulthood pass,
But there’s always a very strong odour of Mass.
 
I’ll take you to newsrooms where stories are written,
To studios for news from reporters hard-bitten.
To political meetings with shoutin’ and hecklin’
And the bloke with the notebook is bound to be Declan.
For Ulster has changed from the days of my youth,
I recognise less now I’m long in the tooth.
When I was a youngster the factory foreman
Was bound to be Davy or Sammy or Norman.
 
But now she’s a feminist and Catholic to boot,
And she has little time for the flag or the flute.
And the boss is from Cork and his wife is from
Tuam,
And they all love their hurling as they’re talking on Zoom.
And the shipyard that gave us the mighty
Titanic
Now gives us only suspicion and panic.
It’s full of them Poles and no Orange sashes,
And Lent is the time of confession and ashes.
 
But sometimes I think if I had my time back,
If the Lord was to hand me another wee crack,
I’d say to myself and my marching band cronies,
‘Let’s all do our homework and stop climbing
boneys.’
And I’d tell my own children that, though it’s too late,
I wish I had left them off at the school gate,
Instead of the flute hall where I’d wait and hope
That they too would
some day be kicking the Pope.
 
For I concentrated hard on our cultural wealth,
And I bought them their union jack hats on the Twelfth,
While over the wall during our fun and revels,
Themmuns were racking up all those A-Levels.
But time still remains by our betters we’re
told,
We’ve still got a chance but we’ve got to be bold.
Let’s get loyal children to do what Seán’s done,
Let’s pick up the book and set down the gun.
 
And in 20 short years a new graduate crop
Will show us again what it’s like to be top.
And across loyal Ulster the message will
spread,
‘Too buckin’ late, lads, the union is dead.”