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!

The Time is Here!

'Tis the 1st of March, the beginning of the greening! With a scant 17 days to celebrate, and only 1 to rest I will try to keep a smile on your face, and anticipation of St. Patrick's Day in your mind.


I will do my best to keep these jokes friendly and only pick on the Irish.... Oh, I may take a jab at the English here and there, but they will hardly notice.....

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A pregnant Irish woman from Dublin gets in a car accident and falls into a deep coma. Asleep for nearly 6 months, when she wakes up she sees that she is no longer pregnant and frantically asks the doctor about her baby.

The doctor replies, 'Ma'am you had twins! a boy and a girl. Your brother from Cork came in and named them.'
The woman thinks to herself, 'Oh No, not my brother... he's an idiot!' She asks the doctor,
'Well, what's the girl's name?
'Denise.'
'Wow, that's not a bad name, I like it! What's the boy's name?'
'Denephew.'

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Paddy is walking past a big wooden fence at the insane asylum and he hears all the residents inside chanting, "Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!"

Quite curious about this, he finds a hole in the fence, and looks in. Someone inside pokes him in the eye. Then everyone inside the asylum starts chanting, "Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!"

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A surgeon and an architect, both English, were joined by an Irish politician, and all fell to arguing as to whose profession was the oldest.
Said the surgeon, "Eve was made from Adam's rib, and that surely was a surgical operation."
"Maybe," said the architect, "but prior to that, order was created out of chaos, and that was an architectural job."
"Shure now," interrupted the politician, "but somebody created the chaos first."

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She followed her husband to the public house.
"How can you come here," she said, taking a sip of his pint of Guinness, "and drink that awful stuff?"
"Now!" he cried, "And you always said I was out enjoying meself."

Day 4 - Thirsty Thursday

A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine; something Brussels Sprouts never do.

- P. J. O'Rourke



Ferguson the blacksmith came in with a badly-damaged foot. The doctor was surprised, for Ferguson was a careful man.
"What happened to you, Paddy?" he asked.
"Well, thirty-three years ago I was a young apprentice with Twomey of Ballinanaspickbuidhe......"
"But about your foot.....?"
"This is about me foot. Twomey had a daughter and your eyes could gaze on her like the way a bullock would eat good grass. The first night I was there she came in when I was in bed and asked if I was comfortable and if I wanted anything and I said I didn't. The next night she came in when I was in bed and she wearing her nightdress and she asked me if there was any single thing she could get me or do for me and I told her I was as comfortable as a bug in a rug. The next night she came in and the girl hadn't a thing on her and she asked me if she could do anything for me and not wanting to keep her standing in the cold and she without a shift I said there was nothing."
"What has that got to do with your foot, Ferguson?" asked the doctor impatiently.
"Sure it was only this morning that I finally thought of what she meant and I was so annoyed with meself that I threw me ten-pound hammer against the wall and it rebounded and broke me ankle."

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A local Irisher was boasting about the grand party he and his pals had the night before.
"Aye," sez he, "Wasn't it a great night the five of us had."
"Who were the five?" asked a listener.
"Well," said the Irisher as he began counting on his fingers. "There was one, that's me. There was Clancy, that's two. There was the Quigley twins, that's three, and there was Sullivan, that's four."
"But you said there were five and you count only four."
"Jist a minute, let me count again,' replied the Irisher as he again began to pick off the number on his fingers. "There was one, that was me. Two, there was Clancy. Three, there was the Quigley twins, and four, there was Sullivan. Shure, I must have taken a wee drop too many, because last night I thought there was five of us at the party. Now I know there's only four."

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Some years ago, Michael J. Flanagan, a successful New York contractor, was standing on the deck of the Staten Island Ferry when a car got loose and sent him into the river where he drowned.
The following Sunday his widow, all decked out in deepest black, was standing on the church steps after Mass, receiving condolences and enjoying every minute of it, when an old friend of the contractor came up. "I'm sorry, Mary, for your trouble," offered the friend. "Did Mike leave you well fixed?" "Oh, he did!" she said. "He left me almost a half million dollars." "Well now, that's not bad for a man who couldn't read or write." "Nor swim either," added the widow.

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Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want
to go to heaven?"
The man said, "I do Father."
The priest said, "Then stand over there against the wall."
Then the priest asked the second man, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"Certainly, Father," was the man's reply.
"Then stand over there against the wall," said the priest.
Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole said, "No, I don't Father."
The priest said, "I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole said, "Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."


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O'Toole volunteered to take care of his numerous children so that Mom could have an evening out. At bedtime he sent the youngsters upstairs to bed and settled down to read. One child kept creeping down the stairs, but O'Toole kept sending him back up.

At 10 o'clock the doorbell rang. It was the next door neighbor, Mrs. O'Brien. She asked if her son was there and O'Toole said no. Just then a little head appeared over the banister and a voice shouted. "I'm here Mom, but he won't let me go home."