Hymn to St Finbarr

You may talk of the Saints and the Scholars, whose names we all learned in school,

Who found Europe in sin and in squalor and brought it to order and rule.

A fig for these globe-trotting clerics - St. Ronan, St. Brendan, St. Gall;

The man who gave women hysterics was Finbarr so handsome and tall.

Chorus

You can keep St. George and his dragons, St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes,

For drinking the quarts and the naggins, St. Finbarr the trophy must take.

While others were off gallivanting in Brussels, Berlin and Paris,

Finbarr his vespers was chanting at home in his church by the Lee.

His miracles all were astounding, but surely of all his great work,

His finest achievement was founding the beautiful city of Cork.

Chorus

St. Canice above in Kilkenny at hurling had made quite a name,

He got an awful shock when he took on our Finbarr at the game.

St. Finbarr, he hurled like lightning, by pulling first time, low and high,

He gave the poor man such a frightening, he thought that the Doomsday was nigh.

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At bowling he cut quite a figure on tarmac or gravelor sods

Men who were many times bigger, he beat by incredible odds.

At draghunts and racetracks and meetings, his dogs always won with a will,

And ever since then there's no beating the dogs of the boys of Fair Hill.

Chorus

Incensed with the heavy taxation on brandy and spirits and wine,

Finbarr gave his dispensation to all, without penance or fine.

So the hills of West Cork were infested with men making poitín and rum,

Which then they consumed and digested to make themselves totally numb.

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Bould Finbarr being always ambitious and eager to taste a smathán,

In a way that was most surreptitious, he founded a still in Guagán.

The stuff that he made was delicious, and eagerly sought and imbibed,

But delivered an impact so vicious, that no-one who drank it survived.

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At a conclave inside in St Peter's the cardinals said with one voice

As they quaffed the red wine by the litre, that Finbarr for Pope was their choice.

On hearing that he was elected and urgently summoned to Rome,

St Finbarr the job he rejected, remarking "There's no place like home!"

Chorus

Con composed this song in an effort to give Cork's patron saint something of the mythic folk-hero status generally accorded to St. Patrick. Finbarr is depicted as the ultimate Corkman: an accomplished sportsman, fond of drink, who rises to the top of his profession and is inordinately attached to his native county .