The First Greek Was An Irishman:And Other Tales Told From The Bottle.

Chapter 1

Many a good and caring person, and many a heathen alike, believe that in the beginning God made the World, and man, told him to multiply and fill the earth.

Others would deny this and find reasons for the existence of this planet and the creatures that inhabit it: Continuous creation, big bang, natural evolution. A multiplicity of theories and a minimum of proof.

There are some that deny the existence of everything and anything…but most agree that two things are a certain: that there is an earth and there are people on it.

They would agree also, that people, believing many things or nothing, are in general reasonable people. Most can see each other’s point of view, even while opposing it.

They eat, sleep, urinate, defecate, fornicate, work a little, pray a little, drink little or much. Some even drink water. Many have a certain amount of respect for law and order and the police. In other words, whether made by God or chemistry, they are normal rational human beings, and they take their place in the animal kingdom, a part of life.

They complete the pattern in the balance of nature.

But…….

There is a discrepancy, an imbalance, a break in nature. It is scattered through all nations, and concentrated in some people, people in a state of permanent opposition to everything and everybody including themselves. People who don’t know what they want and are never happy until they get “it”. They are the Irish.

People of this world can not understand them, and shake their heads, praying to their God or God’s or not a thing, that no Irishman would see which way they walk home, because when anyone goes anywhere, the Irish follow…if not already there.

Many a time, in the history of this exasperating race, other races have tried to banish or exterminate them. Frequently their numbers have been reduced by self-banishment and attempts at mutual extermination, but always a few survived, to breed, to argue, to fight again, to become priests, politicians, policemen, pugilists, and painful disturbers of the peace of Englishmen and other ordinary people: to fight in wars of other nations, generally on both sides, and to sing sad and mournful songs about the beauty and the glory of Ireland…where very few of them are prepared to live!

Only the creation theory can explain the existence of these people. Only the inexplicable mind of God could have conceived them. Ask why they are the way they are and the answer will be “God knows”. Certainly no one else does.

Meet a man with an Irish name, living in any country in this world, many generations removed from the native soil of his ancestors, and his Irishness … that semi-logical unverifiable insanity… should have been bred out of him years ago. You would think having removed himself from the land potatoes, pickled herrings, rhubarb and rain, his mental attitude would change with his geography and diet, that he would become much as other men. You would think so, and you would be wrong.

He will be as his father was, and his father’s father’s father’s father, and the long long line of unco-operative individualists who fought the land, the sea, the climate and each other, and are buried everywhere. He will argue with you,drink with you, love you, curse you, sing to you, fight you, marry your daughters and present you with a tribe of grandchildren who will be as he is. His blood can be as mixed as anybody’s blood can possibly be; but if he owns an Irish name, he’ll own an Irish nature. Kind and considerate, compassionate and bloodthirsty, rational and irrational, broadminded and bigoted…heart of a poet, mind of a hunter.

If it is that every soldier carries a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack, then it should be said that every Irishman, and the descendant of every Irishman, carries in his head the firm conviction that he and he alone can solve the problems of the world. He alone is right, always right. If his ideas of rightness change themselves frequently, then why shouldn’t they? If everybody agreed with everybody else, wouldn’t the world be a terrible monotonous place to live in?

This then is perhaps the only constant and reliable thing in his nature… this belief that monotony is the curse of existence. It does not explain the rest of his nature, but it does seem to go a long way towards an explanation of his consistently rebellious attitude towards any status that may be quo at any time. He has a great desire to alter things. In fact, the first recorded Irishman altered the status quo of the person that disagreed with him.

This first Irishman was a Greek: name of Parthalon it is believed, and because of this ‘disagreement’, known in many a tongue as murder, he emigrated from a wee place known as Macedonia. With him, he took his three sons and their wives, many of his neighbours’ boats, sheep, weapons, pots and pans, gold and a number of their wives. He left his neighbours shaking spears (what was left) and shouting on the shore, while he sailed down the Mediterranean, not knowing exactly what he wanted, but determined to find it.

Into the Atlantic, and there it was…Ireland, which at that time was covered with more wet trees than wet grass, and uninhabited. Parthalon led his fellow-rebels ashore and they prowled around looking for someone to argue with. There was no one about, so they settled down to breed and kill each other. They bred a wee bit faster than they killed because after 300 years there 9,000 of them and counting.

Then, one dark and stormy day, out of the sea came a yelling mob of piratical Fomorians. They were most likely Scandinavians of African pirates, descended from somebody else. With a cry of “Bloody unbelieving Heathens…May God have mercy on you..” by both sides…and everyone had a wonderful time killing each other on the plain where Dublin now stands.

Note: It is unknown about the Fomorians, but often when an Irishman calls down the mercy of God on your head it is the opposite that he means. You have to look beyond the meaning of the spoken word and try to guess what is in his mind. This is rather difficult, since his words and thoughts coincide only when he wants to fight you. He then makes his meaning quite clear.

Now it was a fine fight, and the Irish Greeks won! Celebrating the victory, they all became drunk and forgot to bury the bodies; and a great plague broke out. The bodies lay on the Dublin plain for thirty years.

Only three Irish Greek Captains survived, with a few of their followers. They occupied the island for another 200 years, breeding and fighting with each other and with the Fomorians. In the last great battle, on the coast of Donegal, all became so interested in the fighting that they forget about the rising tide, and with many killed with spears and swords, many more were drowned. And so noted the first recorded sea battle in Irish history.

One Captain, decided that Ireland was too dangerous…because of the sea, weather, land, attacks by more Scandinavians of Africa, and the other two…and they emigrated.

So with brave heart and not so of mind, leaving neighbours shaking spears (what was left) on shore, he led his little cargo of refugees to Greece, where they were immediately enslaved. They became compulsory carriers of wood and water and were issued with leather bags for the work. They became known as Firbolgs, from the Irish words ‘fir=man, and ‘bolg=bag’. After a time, as slaves in Greece, they increased and multiplied, with the blessing of their masters, who liked to have plenty of slaves. With stories and mournful songs about the beauty and glory of Ireland, handed down from father to son, the sons, sufficiently numerous, rebelled against their Greek masters, whose ships, cows, pigs, weapons and wives they stole, leaving their pass masters shaking spears (what was left) and shouting on shore, they sailed west, for that dear land across the Irish sea…where they settled down to farm, breed, love, argue, sing sad mournful songs, kill and be killed…and at times to emigrate once more.