saint patrick’s day

With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner, this started out as a diatribe about how everyone who drinks green beer is going to a special hell. However, I realized, why not actually use this as a time to inform everyone of the things that I find great about my culture! That seemed much more constructive then yelling at you kids to get off my lawn. So, let’s start out with the part that I’ve always loved: folklore, legends and myths. Of which there’s a lot, so I’m gonna give you the Cliffs Notes version of what are referred to as the Three Sorrows of Storytelling, high edited and condensed by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant storyteller.

The Fate of the Sons of Tuiren

The father of the sun God, Lugh, was walking down the road and came across three boys who didn’t like him, like boys do. So they stoned him to death. Lugh found out and was pissed, and demanded a blood debt. He asked for three apples, and the skin of a pig, and a spear, and two horses, and a chariot, and seven pigs, and a dog’s whelp, and a cooking-spit, and three shouts on a hill, and then proceeded to mock them saying that if they were too weak, he’d take some of it off. The boys quickly fell into the trap, and accepted, only to find out that the apples were from the Garden of the Hesperides, the pig skin was a magical skin that could heal any wound, the spear was a poisoned spear belonging to the King of Persia, the horses can travel on land and sea . .  and I think you get the idea. The boys set out and actually went made good on their promise.  Adventures were had, until they got to the hill, where they fought the warrior who was set to make sure NO ONE shouted from the hill, the boys were gravely injured, though still managed to yell off the hill. They brought the stuff to Lugh, and asked him to heal their wounds. He told them that it would be better for them to die a heroes death, now that they’ve acquired all this swag for him, and let the boys die. When their father heard that his sons had died, he died of grief as well. Fin.

The Children of Lir

Sometime after this, the tribes were trying to decide on who should be High King over Erin. The God Lir realllllly wanted it, but they went with some other guy. In return, however, he got to marry the guy’s daughter, Eve. For a while, the two were happy, and Eve bore Lir two sets of twins, but died giving birth to the second set. The High King felt that no man should be alone, so he sent is second daughter, Aoifa, to console her sister’s widow. However, as Sondheim wrote, you can never love someone else’s children the way you love your own, so Aoifa started getting jealous, and eventually turned her step-children into swans, and cursed them for 900 years. When Lir found out, he turned her into a demon of the air, even though she was REALLY sorry for what she did. The four kids had to stay at a pond near their father’s house for 300 years, which was cool, cause they could talk and sing, but eventually, they had to trek out to the sea between Erin and Alba and spend the next 300 years there. Afterwards, they came back to Erin, happy to see their family, only to find out that everyone went and died on them, and that Christianity took over everything. The pond they were at was near a church and the priest befriended them. They became somewhat famous, and finally a pricness of the North married a Prince of the south, and wanted to do it in the church of the swans, which ended up breaking the last part of the curse. The 900 year old children were restored to their humanity, only they were 900 years old and died on the spot. The priest buried them and everyone was sad.

Deirdre of the Sorrows

A man and a woman had a beautiful daughter. She grew up in peace and happiness, but her parents knew she was doomed to fuck some shit up. Eventually the king saw her and fell in love, and took her back to his castle to foster her, and as soon as she became legal, get it on. She had it in her mind that she’d only love a man with hair as black as ebony, and skin as white as snow and lips as red as . .. well, I think we’ve heard that elsewhere, and you get the picture. There was only one such man, named Naoise, and he had two brothers. They met and fell in love, and the three brothers ran away with Deirdre. Furious, the king followed them, disrupting their happy life and what I would imagine would be the two other brother’s sexual frustration. He eventually caught up with them, and there’s a bunch of different version of how, but eventually everyone dies. (no, seriously, there’s a bunch of versions. In one, the brothers die by tripping on poisoned rocks and Deirdre dies from grief. Another, the boys die in battle and she dies after the king insults her after forcing her to have sex with another man.)

So, there you have it! Think of the long tradition of Irish storytelling this weekend, while you’re downing your green bud light, or your car bombs, or trying Guinness for the first time. And as Londonderry Aire (aka Danny Boy) plays for the 500 millionth time, and the drunk next to you starts singing the wrong worlds to When Irish Eyes are Smiling, think back on these stories, and on the Ireland that was before all the shamrocks and leprechauns.