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Happy St. Patrick’s Day Weekend!
Today is the day we celebrate St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland by getting drunk, which actually feels a little fucked up when you think about it. I mean, how many other holidays do we celebrate by way of unflattering ethnic stereotypes? Of course, St. Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland, as there never were any snakes in Ireland to begin with. “Snakes” was actually just code for pagans, which also feels pretty fucked up when you think about it.
As some of you may know, I am, in fact, half Irish. If you didn’t, well, now you know why there’s an occasional post sympathetic to the cause of Irish unification around here. Although I do think I’d probably feel the same way about that even if I weren’t given how I feel about other things (like the aforementioned snakes/Pagans thing).
Anyway, let’s get to your presents, the first of which is an Irish Catholic Sex Education Video from the 1980s. I think my favorite part is the haunted doll.
The scary thing is that even this would probably be too risqué for the Moms for Liberty.
In a less silly vein, here is Irish folk singer Christy Moore (whom I love) singing The Well Below the Valley, an old murder ballad that I have always seen as (very) unintentionally feminist, in the way that the whole situation fills me with a fiery rage.
A variation on The Maid and the Palmer, the song is about a woman who is visited at a well by a holy man (who in some tellings is maybe supposed to be Jesus) who asks her for a cup of water and then she says she might fall in if she tries to get it — at which point he tells her that if he were her true love she’d get him water (because incel shit is old as the hills apparently) and she tells him she doesn’t have one … at which point he tells her that she’s lying, because she’s given birth to six children and killed and buried them all at the well … and that they were the product of being raped by apparently every man in her family. Then, naturally, the holy palmer tells her all about how she’s going to hell.
There’s one of them by your brother John
At the well below the valley-o
One of them by your Uncle Don
At the well below the valley-o
Two of them by your father dear
At the well below the valley-o
Green grows the lily-o
Right among the bushes-o
See? Fucking enraging. Although in this version the “maid” ends things by saying she may not go to hell after all because “the lord above may save my soul,” so … good for her.
And here is a song by Pól Mac Adaim, whom I also love, titled “Bigots Scaring Children.”
It was written about the Holy Cross dispute, a 2001 conflict in which the Ulster Loyalists in Belfast (the Protestants) were mad at the Catholics in the area and decided to harass a Catholic girls’ primary school about it for a year. However, it definitely has a universal feel to it.
And because I know you all don’t like being left on a depressing note (even on a weekend meant for celebrating Irish ethnic stereotypes), please to enjoy another early 2000s jam which lives rent free in my head for reasons I cannot explain.
Also — some exciting news for you all — I am starting to run low on pet pics for Saturdays! SO, if you would like to see your good boy or girl become a top model for a day, send pics to robyn@wonkette.com. The last time a lot of you were confused when I gave image specs, so let’s just say “landscape view” and I will figure it out. Also too, please give us your pet’s name (if you wish) and your first name or commenter name!
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