The Irish Tales

My speech goes down very well indeed, as I was sure it would for I spent many a vodka moment working on it.

One table though, insists on talking through it, so eventually I walk over to them and say : "Look. If you insist on talking whilst I perform, I’ll follow you home and talk whilst you perform."
They shut up.

Which is a shame, as I was keen to follow them home and see just what they did get up to, the sinners.

The guests are a wonderful mixture of young cattlicks, middle-aged cattlicks and old cattlicks. Most of them claim to have been in the Wexford brigade of the IRA.
(Even me, to my eternal shame.)

For instance, check out Guitar Joe (Moyniham), he knows all the chords. But he’s strictly rebel, he only wants to make you cry and sing about the republic.

And we do, because he is best mucker of Christie Moore and he does play the people well.

So he plays The Fields of Athenrye and other such nonsense, but such nonsense is the requirement and the right of a people anywhere in the world, especially so here.

Then there’s Billy The Wasp-Killer. Billy is so-called because he will snuff out the life of any wasp he sees crawling over your drink with only his finger and thumb and then swallow it whole, which is quite remarkable, you have to agree.

Not to mention a little scary.

But as there are many wasps about on that glorious day and as we are enjoying the sun and the drinks outside the hotel, we are much obliged to Billy and his skills.

Now, Billy was in love with Angela, in his own very quiet way and of course today, he has to pretend he isn’t.

He lost his teeth after dancing with the bride and kissing her. We think they will turn up maybe in the morning.

It wouldn’t be an Irish wedding without a fight and it is a belter.

Billy the Pig, not to be confused with Billy the Wasp-Killer, is not much liked hereabouts because he is fat and ugly and a bad drunk and so nobody is much surprised when he walks up to Hugh’s wife and calls her a "fat slut of a Cork whore", which is an insult not just to fat sluts everywhere but also to the whole of County Cork, God’s blessed place.

And nobody sheds any tears when Hugh, who is bigger than my friends Chaz and Doyley combined, gets to his feet and lamps Billy a big one on the head, laying him out cold.

When Billy comes round, he is reluctant to get up, mainly because that would reveal the fact that he has pissed his trousers, fearing a further lamping.

We all point and laugh at him, until someone quietly mentions his connections with what is left of the Wexford brigade and how they might be a little piqued.
This is old Ireland, after all.

So Old Pat sits with his Da, Older Pat. Older Pat claims to have been there when Michael Collins was ambushed and killed by his one-time comrades and whilst nobody says this is an unlikely truth, nobody quite believes it either.

His son, meantime, is the man who re-built Duncormick church with his bare hands and the gift of some local stone. Allegedly.

He takes me to see it the next day, where we sit and drink poteen and eat bread and butter whilst my head pounds and the birds sing sweetly.

Oh how they sing, the utter bastards.

Old Pat laughed like fun when Billy the Pig got his come-uppance.
"If you walk around dis world with yer eyes shut long enough, sooner or later you’re going to walk into a brick wall," says Old Pat thoughtfully.
Aye.

The hangovers from this wedding lasted many a day afterwards and were largely enjoyed by all who felt them, because this is what Ireland can be like, when it wishes.

Even Billy the Pig laughed about it all afterwards, I hear.
Although if I am being coldly honest, that is no great commendation.

Aye, well………………….