There is an Irish jig to which the following lyrics have been put:
Have you ever been
to an Irishman's shanty
where water was scarce
but whiskey was handy
a three legged table
a chair to match
a chick in the corner
all ready to hatch.
I tend to link this song in my memory to the one my grandfather sang on St Patrick's Day (or so the story), which goes
Irishman, Irishman
hang down your head
take a look at your country
and wish you were dead
I remember these in sequence much the way other men remember jokes. My father used to sing Crushkeen Lawn, or so we called it, which turns out to be a favorite of James A. Joyce. It is the only Gaelic I recall, though I would not be able to transcribe it here in anything but pidgin.
When my mother first met my grandfather he had a cast on his arm which he told her came when he fell from the white horse he rode as marshall of the St Patrick’s Day parade. Later she found that he had fallen from the barstool at the saloon where, when I was a toddler, he took me with Old Vetter and Joe McHugh, his friends, and where they ordered me birch beer on draft and pigs knuckles, which I was fond of as a young boy. I cannot remember the name of the bar, though I heard this story a million times. There is a photo of the three old men in shirts and ties and broad trousers, one wears a straw fedora.