"momma told him not to come."
"momma told him not to come."
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not st patrick's day Any day now woodwork all over the world will be creaking under the pressure of emerging Irish men, women, pubescent girls with noisy shoes and fiddles. Not to mention the bodran players. It is a little known fact that homo sapiens emerged from an Irish bog some four millions years ago and promptly swam to Liverpool and then jumped a boat going to America. After spending a 100,000 years in New York waiting for pubs to be invented they got bored and went to Africa and from there spread all over the planet. Consequently we are all Irish. In the typical rural village of Wymsey March 17th is just another day. The token Irish person, thrice married Sister Sara O'Hara, eldest daughter of an itinerant harp maker and a Dublin chorus girl turned writer of bodice rippers, usually takes the ferry to Cork in order to minister to her three cousins Liam, Ocram and Oilam after their three days of spirited drinking. Wymsey does have their own saint though, St. Duvet the Comforter, and the parish church is named after him. His emblem was a white duck and to this day the church sports avian gargoyles. St Duvet's Day is April 23rd which also happens to be the day that the English celebrate their patron St George - a Turk. St. Duvet was a Norman monk who spent many happy years administering comfort to the womenfolk of Normandy whilst their husbands and boyfriends subdued the English. With the return of the Norman army the good friar was forced to flee and he arrived in Wymsey in the spring of 1086. One of his first actions was to set fire to the wooden Saxon church that had been dedicated to St Englebert who was thought to have originally been the minor Norse wind god Etherthart. He then rebuilt the Church in stone for which he was sainted in 1098 having died in the meantime. The village of Wymsey take their Saint's day seriously - serious drinking, dancing, fiddle playing and tall story telling. The Wymsey Diaspora return for a long weekend of serious nostalgia and the renewing of old grudges.
useful connections: © 2000 - 2006 Charles Ivermee
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