By Tim Sanders

Suppose I were to start this column with the following sentence: "Go raibh tu leathuair ar Neamh sula mbeadh a fhios ag an diabhal go bhfuil tu marbh!" What would your reaction be?

A. Tim’s been wearing his mittens at the keyboard again,

B. Dyslexia is a sad, sad thing, or

C. Perhaps President Bush should just stop holding press conferences altogether.

Well, all of those reactions would miss the point. That peculiar sentence is a Gaelic St. Patrick’s Day toast which I scribbled in a notebook several years ago. I guess I should have scribbled the meaning of those words, too, but I’ve never been that organized. So I’ve forgotten what it means, but it’s probably your typical Irish toast, like: "Top o’ the mornin’ to ya’, an’ may your porridge rise to meet ya’ and the wind at your back ne’er make you regret last night’s stinkin’ boiled cabbage, begorrah!" (The only Gaelic phrase I ever really understood was "Erin go bragh," which is simply fashion advice for portly Irish matrons.)

But as to St. Patrick. I’ll tell you all I know about the man and his holiday. It won’t take long.

St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Britain around 389 AD. From his early childhood it was obvious he would one day become a saint. He was noted in his home town for standing on street corners, saying "Me be praised" to the neighbors. This made him a very unpopular child, and when he was a teenager he was abducted by pirates and taken to Ireland. There is no record of how much the townsfolk paid the pirates, but it probably would have been a bargain at twice the price. Those simple British peasants knew that one teenage saint would eventually lead to more, and before long they’d have dozens of them gathered at soda fountains and under lamp posts, smiling beatifically, blessing everyone and making general pests of themselves. Sort of like the Osmond family.

At any rate, the pirates were blissfully unaware that sixteen-year-old Patrick was courting sainthood, and sold him to a farmer in Ulster, who put him to work peeling sheep and guarding potatoes. Or maybe it was the other way around. After six or seven years Patrick escaped and went back to Britain, and from there to France, where he studied hard, took all the tests, and annoyed the clergy until they finally had him certified. In 431 he returned to Ireland a licensed and bonded Catholic missionary, well equipped to repay the Irish for teaching him potato farming and livestock management.

Patrick founded over 300 churches in Ireland, and caught and baptized thousands of unsuspecting tribal Irishmen. It has been said that he single-handedly turned a loosely-knit society of drunken, loutish, brawling Irish pagans into a loosely-knit society of drunken, loutish, brawling Irish Catholics in a space of only thirty years.

Many historians contend that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland, but the details are always sketchy. Walk into a Dublin pub and ask an Irishman how he knows St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, and he’ll invariably tell you: "Look around, d’ya see any snakes hereabouts?" When you admit that you certainly don’t, he’ll rest his case. Were you to suggest that by that line of reasoning St. Paddy must have driven all the monkeys out of Ireland, too, that would be a tactical error. Remarks like that will get you invited to either a donneybrook or a brouhaha, and those traditional Irish celebrations are not for the faint of heart. Never get too specific with an Irishman.

So after exterminating the snakes and the pagans, and after doing something or other with a shamrock, St. Patrick died on March 17, 461, and everyone in the Emerald Isle was thankful. For his efforts, I mean. To show their gratitude, the Irish gave him his very own March 17 holiday. Today Irishmen all over the world honor the man who civilized them and made them good Christians. They celebrate his sainthood and their Christianity by wearing green, consuming huge quantities of whiskey, and marching in parades. Unfortunately, since they usually do those things in precisely that order, their parades are often disorganized affairs, punctuated by fistfights, vomiting, and discordant singing.

And speaking of discordant singing, no Irish celebration would be complete without the song "Danny Boy," The song tells the doleful story of a lad who feels compelled to leave his little Irish village, which has an Irish valley and an Irish meadow and everything. We are not sure why he wants to leave, but apparently it has something to do with bad bagpipe music being played by somebody named Glen. Of course, since it’s an Irish song, Danny’s motivation and his destination are both unimportant. The singer is never identified, and may be his mother, his girlfriend, his algebra teacher or his dog, Spot. Like so many things Irish, the song is not specific. We do know that the singer encourages Danny by telling him that she’ll be waiting for him when he returns, lying there under the sod all dead and hard as a carp. It’s not clear if she has serious emotional problems or just some fatal glandular disorder. Either way, it’s a very plaintive tune. Many non-Irish individuals believe that "Danny Boy" is the Irish national anthem, but such is not the case. Any true Irishman will tell you that the Irish national anthem is "The Soldier’s Song," which contains these inspiring lyrics:

We’re children of a fighting race,
That never yet has known fear.
Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,
Ninety-nine bottles of beer ...

I believe that "The Soldier’s Song" was written by an Irishman named Guinness.

But the Irish are not just colorful, artistic people known for their emotionally moving music. Famous Irish persons in other areas of endeavor include Emily O’Estevez, Earnest and Julie O’Gallo, Barack O’Bama, and the attractive and functional Paddy O’Dohr.

That is all the St. Patrick’s Day information anyone could possibly need. Don’t thank me, it’s my job.