The greatest story ever told ... in Killaloe

Relishing one of my first Killaloe pints in Willie Walsh’s lively pub at the top of the hill and listening to countrymen telling country stories the good old country way it suddenly struck me that most of the greatest stories ever told in all the literatures were first related that way, orally, strongly, simply, from a rural mouth and tongue to the nearest rural ears.

This would have been well before they were written down in any fashion and maybe sanitised for the masses that followed. They claim that stories, even the greatest stories ever told, lose nothing in the telling but I would argue that maybe they do sometimes. I would suggest that is maybe another pure truth.

On that basis, for what it is worth, I am offering today an Irishman’s version of one of those greatest stories ever told, the one which is the true foundation of the seasonal celebration into which we are being plunged again.