"Today is St. Patrick's Day. As my wife, Sheila, reminded me just now, that on St.Patrick's Day we all pretend to be Irish, but she feels that's consistent as we all pretend to be good on Christmas Day.
As a born and bred Irish man, may I wish all of you, 'Top of the morning' and impart to you all this Irish blessing.While many Irish men and women know this blessing, apart from a Roman Catholic Priest, or St.Patrick himself, only one other type of person is sanctioned to give you the blessing. And what kind of person might that be? I hear you ask. It is the eldest of seven siblings born to a mother who herself was the eldest of seven siblings, and whose first-born was blessed by a peg-selling gipsy after spat palms had been pressed with a silver sixpenny bit in between (someone like me).
'May The Road Rise Up To Meet You'
'May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.'
I was recently reading that since the Industrial Age, had it not been for the Irish Navvies who came across the Irish Sea in their hundreds of thousands to undertake laborious and dangerous tasks so that Great Britain could build its railways, tunnels, sewers, bridges, roads and motorways, we would still be transported in the horse and cart. While many an Irish Navvy died in their dangerous jobs, over the past fifty years they have learned to wise up to English ways and take their full ration of tea breaks. Today they are prone to look for the smartest way to do something instead of the hardest. This is one of my late mother's songs that I often heard her sing as I grew up.Happy St. Patrick's Day. William Forde: March 17th,2017.
https://youtu.be/PkDaYpriHWA