THE REASON FOR FUDDLING ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY,
I've often heard it asked by many,
Why on St. Patrick's Day
Poor Paddies will expend their only penny,
Moistening their thirsty clay:
There is no record that the saint was given
To that strong "dew," which smacks of earth—not heaven.
Yet, stop!
'Tis said, in a profane effusion
Of some old villain,
That Patrick's mother, to the Saint's confusion,
Kept in Inniskillin
A sheebeen shop;
But this I honestly believe's abuse,
Invented by some faithless boozing sinner,
Who wanted anything as an excuse
To take his fourteenth tumbler after dinner.
The saint I'm certain was a saint devout,
Drinking the purling stream quite "cold without;"
In fact he'd taken the teetotal pledge:
For what cared he for whisky, port, or sherries,
Who ate his hunk of bacon 'neath a hedge,
From which he plucked a poor dessert of berries?
Because
Red hips and haws
Are not like filberts, and their attendant salt,
Those strong provocatives to make men "malt."
The only cause that I could e'er discover,
Why on the anniversary of St. Pat.
Your true Milesian will get half-seas-over
(And sometimes more than that),
Is—and the reason's simpler than you think it—
Whilst any man,
Like Kinahan,
Brews L L whisky—somebody must drink it.
