The St. Patrick's Day Toast:All You Need is a Pot o' Goggle
Posted: Thursday, March 17, 2011
by C.Korbel and K.Kern
Make A Toast
On March 17th people will gather together in pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants, churches and homes in Ireland as well as all over the world. They will lift a glass to commemorate the Emerald Isle’s champion of Christianity, St. Patrick, who passed away in 461 AD.
The myth goes that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. This is pure blarney. In reality, he was born into a prominent Roman family and later kidnapped into slavery in Ireland, then escaped back to Rome where he trained at the Vatican to become a priest, only to return to Ireland to vanquish the Druids in an epic battle of magic versus Christianity.
Technically, toasting on this holiday has its antecedent in the Irish Wake, which celebrates the life of the recently departed.
One way to go would be to crib some toasts from Google. Unless you have chosen a toast of seven words or less, we suggest creating a note card or two. Good Irish toasts are composed with precise wording, any deviation and it crumbles faster than soda bread.
Google can also translate anything into Irish and tutor you in proper pronunciation. If you choose to deliver your toast in phonetic Irish, we recommend following it with an equally grand translation into the language of your listeners.
How about making your own toast? Even if you are not Irish, or the closest you have been to fair Erin is eating a bowl of Lucky Charms, we will show you how.
Traditionally, toasts made on this day offer blessings of good fortune. However, after a millennium-and-a-half conventions have expanded to include humorous observations, calls to action, warnings, and exultations on subjects ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Befitting a nation that produced both Yeats and Wilde, these toasts vacillate between heartfelt sentiments and irreverent truths. They are composed with great eloquence or blunt honesty. They can be one-liners or stanzas, usually employing complex word play.
Like a fine whiskey maker, before we start to distill our own blend, we must liberally sample the competition. The following five examples are by no means definitive, but are representative of the most common styles.
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Sample One: The Irreverent Observation
“It is better to spend money like there's no tomorrow
than to spend tonight like there's no money!”
While terrible financial advice, this is a call to guilt-free indulgence. This simple sentence inverts a phrase to get its cheeky point across.
Sample Two: The Rhyming Stanza
“My friends are the best friends (A)
Loyal, willing and able. (B)
Now let’s get to drinking! (C)
All glasses off the table!” (B)
Somewhat similar to a traditional Irish limerick, this is a quatrain, meaning it has four lines. Here the last syllable of line two rhymes with its counterpart in line four. This is one option. In addition, quatrains in any of these rhyme schemes work: A/A/B/B; A/B/A/B; and A/A/A/A; A/B/B/A.
This toast is also a call to joy in the moment with a shout out to your drinking mates.
Sample Three: Clever Word Play
“Here's to being single...
Drinking doubles...
And seeing triple!"
The author is having fun with literal and figurative meanings of words. Again, these types of toasts rarely praise the benefits of sobriety.
Sample Four: Set up, Punch line
“May you be in heaven a full half hour
before the devil knows you’re dead.”
This is one variation of a classic toast created in joke format with the first line setting up the surprising information that follows. In Irish culture, blessings for the afterlife are appropriate to offer even to the young and healthy.
Sample Five: Heartfelt
“May the Irish hills caress you.
May her lakes and rivers bless you.
May the luck of the Irish enfold you.
May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.”
Even though the sentiment being expressed is sincere, there is still wordplay. This toast is a very simple blessing that directly acknowledges the most traditional themes of Saint Patrick’s Day. Its tone and subject matter make it suitable for offering to just about anyone.
Now we will give it a shot. First we will need a theme, let us pick dreams since it is so ambiguous. The toast will be directed to everyone. Here are a couple of versions similar to the five above.
1. The Irreverent Observation
“Tonight let’s live our dreams; our nightmares can wait until we wake.”
2. The Rhyming Stanza
“Last Night I dreamed I saw St. Patrick dressed in brilliant green
At a swanky bar hanging with infamous Charlie Sheen
Having fought Celtic Druids and Network Producers in a similar fashion.
Each man raised a glass to a fellow Ninja Warrior Vatican Assassin.”
3. Clever Word Play
“Here is to living the dream
And staying awake long enough
Not to sleep through it.”
4. Set Up, Punch Line
“Here’s to dreaming, the second best thing one can do in bed…Sleep being the third.”
or
“Dream all day, think all night and if I have this confused a strong drink will set it right.”
5. Heartfelt
“Tonight dream of happiness,
Tonight dream of love,
Tonight dream of Ireland
And all St. Patrick’s blessings from above.”
Impressed or underwhelmed? All we can say is we wrote them in short order using the exact same tools we are giving you. Now you try. If you’re lucky, someone will tell you they’ve heard that one before. Whether you’re drinking green beer or a Shamrock shake, take the opportunity to raise a glass.
On Saint Patrick’s Day everyone has a little bit of Irish in them- although it could just be a leprechaun dying to get out.
Erin Go Braugh! Ireland Forever!
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