Raiméis

I was looking for some comedy sketches when I cam across this, thought it was worth posting, NI being in the news an’ all.

A Protestant ( John Byrne ) & A Catholic ( Kevin McAleer ) are sitting in a pub in Northern Ireland. They confess to bigotry in the past, but applaud the new spirit of finding common ground, particularly in relation to History…

Kevin McAleer : “The Protestants, I think we would all agree, arrived here 400 years ago, they robbed the Catholic land, they drove us up to the hills like so many sheep, they did their best to brutalise our culture, our language, our traditions. Our struggle continues to right these wrongs, and that struggle goes on even, I suppose, even as we speak… ”

John Byrne : ( who has been signalling warm approval, takes the batton ) “I couldn’t have put that better myself. These early settlers were fine, decent, hard-working Protestant stock. They found a wasteland, a bog, as Kevin said, inhabited by semi-nomadic non-English-speaking Roman Catholics. They built towns, they built cities, they started up industries, basically they transformed Ulster into the garden that we know today… ”

McAleer continues : “It’s so refreshing to hear John speak of the positive aspects of Ulster. Our Gaelic culture, as he says, is flourishing, and we’re going to outbreed you Prods. And we will not hesitate to use the ballot-box as a weapon if that’s what it takes to achieve our constitutional ends of a united Ireland… ”

Byrne adds : ” I share Kevin’s vision of this threat of a United Ireland, and what we need is a wall, a big wall… ”

This article “Holding The Fort” 24th May 1998 : Declan Lynch proposes that the Good Friday agreement on Northern Ireland is but an imitation of the following comedy sketch…