There's Bethlehem and Cheltenham, Lourdes and Limerick Junction
Medjugorje or a rub of the extreme unction
Good people climb Croagh Patrick with serenity on their faces
But I found my salvation, below at the Galway Races

Clergymen dressed up like men and models home from London
Whallup and how's she cuttin' John? Begod sure only Middlin'
Gamblers with big wads of notes, going mad to gamble
Na boys' isteach as inverin, there just to take a ramble

Helen Lucy smells the mattress and reviews the hairy bacon
Says Mickey Finn to Galligan, hey Peter what are you takin'?
Shish kebabs, Kinvara crabs as people stuff their faces
Others couldn't eat to save their lives below at the Galway Races

Its there you'll see gentility and sheep dressed up like mutton
Double barrelled names with more airs than old melodeons
The talk is all of tillage and of silage and con acre
I tell you scraws and bottoms would be closer to the mark sir

Sir John Muck Savidge-Smythe is there with Smurfit's and O'Reilly's
Owners and trainers, stable boys and jockeys
With silk around their arses getting up on rich mens' horses
Not to mention wives and daughters and marriages and divorces

There's pontoon, twenty five and there's savage games of poker
There's them would lay their lives on two flies walking up the wall sure
There's wise men from the east making eyes at go-go dancers
And ministers of state accepting drinks from terrible chancers
Salthill after dark, is like Sodom and Gomorra
There's people doing things tonight that they'll regret tomorrow
There's folk and trad, they're disco mad, karaoke and set dances
And people who've seen better days looking to take their chances

They're under starters orders and Michael O'Hehir is waiting
Lester's up on the favourite and she'll surely take some beating
Necks are craned and eyes are strained there's fear upon their faces
There's agony and ecstasy below at the Galway Races

Bethlehem and Cheltenham, Lourdes and Limerick Junction
Medjugorje or a rub of extreme unction
Good people climb Croagh Patrick with serenity on their faces
But I found my salvation, below at the Galway Races