“I’m hugely proud of being Irish and I don’t even know what that means. I just know that it’s true.”
— Domhnall Gleeson

How does anyone know what’s true in Ireland these days? We love to tell stories.

St. Patrick’s Day. It’s about that English boy, who was officially made the patron saint of Ireland. You ready for this?

1. He wasn’t actually Irish.

2. Patrick was not his original name.

3. He claimed to have seen visions and heard voices.

4. Green was not the color he actually wore. OMG, that’s my Uncle Pat!

Legend (Google) tells us that when Patrick was 16, a band of Irish “pirates,” after drinking breakfast, kidnapped him from his field in Britain and brought him to Ireland, where he worked as an “animal herder” and … became a bouncer in a Boston saloon. I made that last part up.

I don’t know which of the Irish “pirates” came up with that story, but my favorite is the one about how St. Pat miraculously drove all the snakes of Ireland into the sea. As if Irishmen don’t often see snakes on St. Patrick’s Day.

On this day everyone in America wearing a funny green cotton hat or tie or paper shamrock on their lapels will claim that they’re “part” Irish, or maybe knew a girl who has a cousin in Bangor who is.

I’m told by a friend in Boston that lots of “Part Irish” fellas with Russian or German names still get hammered in their favorite Irish bar and go and splash the alley bricks with their vomit. It never ends.

Of course, we “pure” Irish will welcome all who want to mix their fuel with ours. Just remember, that’s like mixing Jameson Irish Whiskey with water from the neighbor’s hose.

My grandparent Matt Devine, who was among the “pure” Irish who got off the boat in Boston, was told “No Irish need apply.” So he went to St. Louis and became a cop. You can look it up.

It’s a fact that none of my five brothers married Irish girls. They had had, I suspect, enough after a life with my mother, Veronica Conlon Devine, who was a piece of work.

So I now have a flock of “Irish” Italian, French and German Devines scattered around the country, who are fiercely proud of being “part” Irish.

This is how it happened that there are so many “part” Irish in America.

Once upon a time, a boatload of Irish boys left the Emerald Isle and came to the New World, and ran off the boat into the arms of Union soldiers, who enlisted them on the spot, and sent them down to kill their cousins in gray, who had gotten off the boats in South Carolina and New Orleans.

When the war was over, all the Irish boys — including my great uncle John Devine — went West and joined George Custer  who joined the General in the 7th Calvary but missed the action at the Little Big Horn.

So here I am today, the last of the full-blooded pure Irishmen typing words for a living.

Oh! I forgot to mention a cousin who stole a pig in Killarney and was given a choice of life in Australia or to just go build a railroad in America.

Slán agus beannacht, goodbye and blessings.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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