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St. Patrick’s Day

Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom (sounds like corned beef and stout, keep your damned cabbage) does the honors. Your Irish eyes will smile.

In Suffolk County, Massachusetts, it’s Evacuation Day … an important day locally. No, not because it marks the day in 1776 when Washington’s siege* forced the British to evacuate Boston, dumping their guns and baggage unceremoniously off the end of Long Wharf. Because it coincides with St. Pat’s and is (another) excuse for State House and City Hall hacks to dodge work, with bonus early drinking privileges.

O’Surber celebrates St. Bernard’s Day.

Traditional observance at This Ain’t Hell veers Republican … the other kind … with all the Irish bar tune vid you could ask for, and Dropkick/Sox love that sounds suspiciously local. My Pogues fave here, live in Boston here. “The Boys From the County Hell.”  Those and other great Irish lyrics follow. Drink before reading:

On the first day of March it was raining
It was raining worse than anything that I have ever seen
I drank ten pints of beer and I cursed all the people there
And I wish that all this raining would stop falling down on me

And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother wake me early in the morning

At the time I was working for a landlord
And he was the meanest bastard that you have ever seen
And to lose a single penny would grieve him awful sore
And he was a miserable bollocks and a bitch’s bastard’s whore

I recall we took care of him one Sunday
We got him out the back and we broke his fucking balls
And maybe that was dreaming and maybe that was real
But all I know is I left that place without a penny or fuck all

But now I’ve the most charming of verandahs
I sit and watch the junkies, the drunks, the pimps, the whores
Five green bottles sitting on the floor
I wish to Christ, I wish to Christ
That I had fifteen more

The boys and me are drunk and looking for you
We’ll eat your frigging entrails and we won’t give a damn
Me daddy was a blue shirt and my mother a madam
My brother earned his medals at My Lai in Vietnam

And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother wake me early in the morning

But so many to choose from. If I should Fall From Grace With God. Turkish Song of the Damned. Then there’s The Sickbed of Cuchulainn.

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There’s a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There’s devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you’ll dream of foreign lands

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was curing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair

And in the Euston Tavern you screamed it was your shout
But they wouldn’t give you service so you kicked the windows out
They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains
So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair

You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl
There was lousy drunken bastards singing Billy is in the bowl
They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch
So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church

Now you’ll sing a song of liberty for blacks and paks and jocks
And they’ll take you from this dump you’re in and stick you in a box
Then they’ll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground
But you’ll stick your head back out and shout “we’ll have another round”
At the graveside of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel around and pray
And God is in His heaven, and Billy’s down by the bay

And The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda.

* The Continental Army hauled captured guns from Ticonderoga in Vermont to the outskirts of Boston. Washington mounted them on Dorchester Heights, over my shoulder at Boston Herald, and across the Charles in Cambridge.

Topics: Boston

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:17 am Comments (1) on Tuesday, March 17, 2009

One Response to “St. Patrick’s Day”

1. RebeccaH Says:
   March 17th, 2009 at 11:58 am

   Sláinte Mhaith!

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