People think that Dublin, Ireland's fair capital city
Is a place of merriment, overflowing with craic and whiskey,
Whose narrow streets are filled with poets and singers and also
Pretty girls with wheelbarrows selling cockles and mussels;
A city redolent with history, whose gutters run with half-digested Guinness
After closing time, and the drinkers have been hurled into the gutter
By jovial bouncers who can recite "Ulysses" from start to finish
From memory, and where the Liffey, sweet Anna Liffey, flows peacefully,
With only an occasional splash when a pedestrian topples gaily in.
But there is a darker side to famous Baile Atha Cliath, oh yes,
And the following anecdote is a sad but true indictment of the evil,
The omnipresent evil, which lurks in the black soul of the city.
I was wandering along the banks of the old Royal Canal one summer's evening
With my drinking companion, my dear Afro cousin, Black Paddy McSpigot,
Pausing only to glance briefly at the copulating couples on the towpath
(We were slightly amused by the small crowd watching one couple
who were engaged in the athletic congress of the hump-backed whale
underneath the bridge by Rose Street, a favourite spot for young lovers),
When a terrible shriek rent the air and a horde of renegade drunken nuns
Poured out of a late night underground folk-music drinking den
(the hugely amplified noise of the massed uilléan pipes was deafening
and had probably driven the poor dears into a religious frenzy).
Seeing Black Paddy by my side, and mistaking his falsetto rendition of "Skibereen"
For an excerpt from the Satanic Mass, they yelled out (in polyphonic harmony)
"Tis the divil himself, so it is, an' all, an' all, let's get the focker",
And without further ado they leaped on him and ripped him to shreds,
Hurling lumps of his poor, poor body into the crocodile infested canal,
Where they were immediately masticated by the terrifying reptiles
(the mighty creatures had been stolen from the Zoological Gardens
by a group of drunken Animal Rights campaigners out on a bender,
and were the toast of the town in every gay bar in the vibrant city).
I cowered in terror at the horrific spectacle, thanking my lucky stars
I was wearing my archibishop's fancy dress uniform that evening
(it was the only way to jump the queue to get into Davy Byrne's Bar).
Dear God, I'll not visit the dear Emerald Isle again in a hurry, to be sure.
Gold trophy winner
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