Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

[From top: The Annual Saint Patrick's Day Parade in NYC, St. Paddy the Leprechaun, his proverbial pot of gold, and a keg o' beer]

Faith and Begorra!

It's Saint Patrick's Day!

Everyone knows the story:

When St. Joseph of Arimathaea migrated to the British Isles, St. Mary "Holy Grail" Magdalene went with him.

When they arrived, the mighty Irish hero Cuchulain just so happened to be leading a raiding party from the Emerald Isle and he spotted and spied upon Magdalene while she bathed in the River Thames, and was stricken by her Semitic beauty.

A hot-blooded warrior who could not contain his boiling lust, he dashed and splashed into the river and abducted the lovely woman and carried her off for a starlit romp at Stonehenge.

The affair produced divine triplets, as forever celebrated in such popular minstrel songs as "An Irishman, A Jewess, And A Barrel Of Beer":

Faith and Begorra!
What do we see?
'Tis Cuchulain and Mary
And 1-2-3!

The legendary "Brothers Three" are, of course, the elf Kris Kringle (a.k.a. Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of crass commercialism), the cherub Cupid (a.k.a. Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lust), and Paddy the Leprechaun (a.k.a. St. Patrick, the patron saint of beer).

March 17 is celebrated in Ireland and across the Republic as the day Paddy introduced beer to Ireland.

Hence he is the Irish Dionysus, the latter, earlier divinity having introduced wine to ancient Greece and from thence art, poetry, drunkeness, tragedy, incoherent ramblings, and Roman occupation.

For his part, St. Paddy's own gift of beer led to labyrinthine Celtic art, fairy-tales, armwrestling, fist-fighting, barroom brawling, the incoherent ramblings of James Joyce, the proddy English occupation, bloody Sunday, Bono, and, of course, everyone's favorite neighborhood Irish pub.

As for the origin of St. Paddy's "pot of gold," the best-selling and now sued The Davinci Code author Dan Brown is rumored to be working on a new book to help him pay his legal bills.

The book is called "The Rainbow Connection," and explores the theory that St. Paddy's hidden "pot o' gold" was actually code for a stashed keg o' beer.