Happy St. Paddy's Month - 2013

So what could be more uplifting and humorous than a few stories about a tradition in Ireland that is an occasion of drinking, story telling, and exaggeration? Let’s begin with stories of Irish Wakes! J

The ritual of the wake has not changed in a thousand years . . . They have the kitchen table, and they cover it with a white sheet and a silk pillow and they lay the remains out on the table and all the neighbors come in and pay their last respects.  Such a man Iying there is Seamus O'Shaughnessy, passed on, deceased, gone over, demised, and he's stone dead as well.

A few stories and drinks into the wake, two of the legs on the table caved in and O'Shaughnessy slid onto the floor. And Muldoon said, "My God, what are we going to do?"

Murphy said, "Well, we'll have to level him up somehow. We'll put his head on a chair, we'll put a chair at his feet, we push a chair in underneath him, lift him up and level him out."

Muldoon said, "A good idea! "

Murphy said, "Leave it to me." Murphy looked at the people at the wake and said, "Can we have three chairs for the corpse?"

And they all went, "Hip hip hooray! "

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Poor Paddy was found dead, lying prostrate in his own back yard. Since the weather was a bit on the warm side, the wake was held down to just two days, to insure that his mortal remains would not take a bad turn.

Finally his friends laid him in his coffin, nailed it shut & started their way down the hill into the churchyard. Since it was a long, sloping path and the mourners were appropriately tipsy, one fellow lurched into the gatepost as they entered the graveyard.

Suddenly a loud knocking came from inside the coffin. Paddy was alive!

They opened it and up sat Paddy, wide eyed and breathing, to be sure! And they all said, “Sure, it's a miracle of God!”

They all rejoiced, went back and had a few more drinks. But later that day, the poor man actually died. Paddy really passed away this time. Stone cold dead, he was.

They bundled him back into his box. As they huffed and puffed down the hill the very next morning, the priest said, "Careful now, boys; mind ye don't bump the gatepost again."

Slainte!