As an offshot from the Corries thread here's a song I know from a Dubliners LP. I think I got the lyrics nearly correct but I can't be 100% sure. It's a song from bygone days when the Anglo-Irish conflict was fought with wrong sentences, guns and bombs, means of conflict management we haven't heard of for at least four weeks.

Wolfgang

THE OLD ALARM CLOCK
As recorded by The Dubliners on "A Drop of the Hard Stuff"
(Tune: The garden where the praties grow
Author: ?)

1. When first I came to London in the year of '39
The City looked so wonderful and the girls were so divine
But the coppers got suspicious and they soon gave me the knock.
I was charged with being the owner of an old alarm clock.

2. Oh next morning down by Marlborough street I caused no little stir,
The IRA were busy and the telephones did burr.
Said the judge, "I'm going to charge you with the possession of this machine
And I'm also going to charge you with the wearing of the green."

3. And says I to him, "Your honour, if you give me half a chance,
I'll show you how me small machine can make the peelers dance.
It ticks away politely till you get an awful shock
And it ticks away the gelignite of me old alarm clock."

4. Said the judge, "Now listen here, my man, and I'll tell you of our plan.
For you and all your countrymen I do not give a damn.
The only time you'll take is mine ten years in Dartmoor dock
And you can count it by the ticking of your old alarm clock."

5. Now this lonely Dartmoor city would put many in the jigs.
The cell it isn't pretty and it isn't very big.
Sure I'd long ago have left the place if I had only got,
Ah, me couple of sticks of gelignite and me old alarm clock.