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.
[Illustration]