St. Patrick's Day

It was a rainy St Pat's Day on Saturday but the lineups at the Sticky Wicket were already forming by early afternoon, and soon afterward the sons of old blighty were using the adjacent construction pit for a latrine. Later on in the evening a visitor from Prince George was determined to retrieve his hat down there. How it got there he didn't say. A passenger in my cab had idea of such brilliance he was clearly transfixed by his own genius. "You know," he said, "On St Patrick's Day every bar in the world should be required to serve as much free beer as you want, as long as you are of Irish descent.
My Mother's mother's mother was born to the Rooney clan so I guess that make me of Irish descent. If so, something must have gone wrong. Oh, I like my beer well enough and Guiness is one of my favs. But I do not like public drunkenness. As far as I'm concerned you shouldn't be out in public if you can't handle your suds. I really, really, detest drunks of the boorish, belligerent variety. Maybe detest is not quite the word. Contempt is far better. You might detest a mobster, but you feel contempt for the lickspittles who hang around the big man hoping for a little reflected glory.
My Catholicism was inherited from the Rooneys and I guarantee my grandmother had no use for drunks either and her strict moral code woulde have been horrified by the kind of behavior these so-called Irish descendants display so proudly. I think she felt the same way I do. They shame our race. I think St Patrick would feel the same.
At one time I was rather proud of my Irishness. You know, the land of bards and all that. And Ireland does have a literary heritage disproportionate to its size. But then there are the Boston Irish, of whom the most despicable is Edward kennedy. Even from this distance I am aware of how callously he walked away from the car he had driven into a river leaving a young woman to drown. I'm still wondering why he isn't in jail for that. Then there is that fool Bono who thinks he can tell the prime minister of Canada how to run the country. Considering the prime minister in question was Paul Martin I suppose he groveled instead of telling him to stick his head somewhere the sun doesn't shine.
Who was St. Patrick? He is the semi legendary bringer of Christianity to Ireland. Ireland already had a rich religious life, and the story goes that he engaged in a contest with the country's religious leaders. By winning the dispute St. Patrick convinced them to convert to Christianity. Subsequently Ireland evolved its own distinctive version of the Faith, being isolated from other centers of European cultural and religious development. Monestaries were centers of learning and art and only the Irish Church of Western Christianity retained a knowledge of the Greek language. Asceticism was in, mortification of the flesh. Things are a little different now.
By the way, maybe this is a good place for me to trot out my explanation for the legend that St.Patrick drove the snakes out Ireland. Nonsense, we are told, there were never any snakes in Ireland. I suppose the experts are right that there are no native Irish snakes. (Unless we count the Kennedys) But if you read your Herodotus you will find a story about a certain people (I can't remember which one offhand but I think they lived somewhere above the Black Sea) who kept snakes for religious purposes. Now, if you look at the names of many of the rivers that flow from the north into the Black Sea you will note that most of them begin with the letters dan, don, dn, etc. Irish legend claims a long ago people called the Tuatha de Danaan invaded the island. That means the People of the Godess Dana. Any connection? A people who brought domesticated household snakes with them? You heard it here first.