The Twenty Six Counties - a tour

Carl Zeiss Fenlon sent this to me today from the old Country, I may have added a bit or three!

Carlow = Mad for sugar beet, can’t get enough of it. Hobbies: Growing sugar beet. Site of many road crashes as the place is so boring, many fall asleep at the wheel. Also fond of rustling sheep from Kildare & Wicklow and depriving both Counties of a healthy sex life. Has a huge Braun factory for making moustache razors for the women of Leitrim.

Cavan = filthy, ignorant hillbillies, tight. Hobbies: discovering IRA ammo dumps and knitting black balaclavas. Still learning not to "sup tay" from the saucer. Cavan is also renowned for the discovery of copper wire when two men from Arvagh were fighting over a penny!

Clare = fiddle-playing charming people and, more recently, fine footballers. Hobbies: Falling into pot-holes and being never heard from ever again, setting up golf courses in their back lawns. Has a Giant US airbase called Shannon.

Cork = the loveable rogues of Ireland. Here for everyone else’s entertainment. Hobbies: Milking cows, being European capital of culture but not knowing what exactly that means or how they got it boy? Calls itself the Rebel County which is an oxymoron as they are known for being a shower of sell-outs & informing backstabbing bastards. Why do Seagulls fly upside down over Cork City? They're not good enough to shit on!

Donegal = away in their own world up there, not much known about this eccentric type. Hobbies: Stripping the Irish coast of fishies, running back up to their corner of the island and blaming the Spanish….aye twas the Spanish!! Winning an All-Ireland every century and playing host to Gay Byrne.

Dublin North = criminals, drug dealers and factory workers, dirty women, skinheads and all-round examples of human waste. Hobbies: Heroin and watching serial numbers being filed off stolen BMW's, joy-riding anything from a lexus to a washing machine.
Dublin South = west Brits, snobs, rich, easy glamorous women. Hobbies: talking shite and sleeping with their best friend's spouse or mother. Difference between a Northside & Southside woman having an orgasm, Southsider drops her voice, Northsider drops her chips.

Galway = sophisticated culchies, sexually adventurous, cultured and wealthy. Hobbies: Teaching sex acrobatics to foreign tourists, dropping acid, juggling with fire on the streets, paying a million euro for a three bedroom suburban house and pretending it was a bargain.

Kerry = God’s kingdom on earth, no doubt about it. Some of the best land in Ireland but they don’t tell anyone this. Hobbies: Football, swimming with dolphins, football, seeing how many foreigners they can score each year, football, hosting a massive festival every week, football, going to the south pole and football. Arrogant bastards - a kerryman with an inferiority complex is one who thinks everyone else is as good as him.

Kildare = is anyone really from Kildare or are they all just from Dublin? Hobbies: Denying they have anything to do with Dublin. Spending best part of 4 hours each day travelling to and from Dublin. Using Daz for whiter than white jerseys on a summer’s day. Known as the 3S' county - Short grass, Sheepshit & Soldiers.

Kilkenny = red haired alcoholics who refuse to believe not all land in Ireland is capable of growing barley and wheat “not a bother”. Hobbies = driving massive combines, hosting comedy festivals and having red-haired babies. Hurling royalty though Gaelic Football's red haired stepchild as they get beaten like one everytime.

Laois = harmless aul bunch of lads, hope to have the whole county by-passed at some stage by 2025 so they can get on with their own business. Hobbies: Living an honest life, collecting EU development grants, getting the piss taken out of them for being the queen’s county…ha-ha ye plantation bastards! Basically in hurling circles, they are renowned as the poor man's Offaly.

Leitrim = enigmatic reclusive weirdos. Hobbies: learning about traffic lights and roundabouts in school (night school for adults that is), Men have hairy palms and women pride themselves on their moustaches. Also known as Sligo's bitch.

Limerick = grand place, great sports people, city has bad reputation through no fault of its own. Hobbies: stabbing people, gang-land murders, drug hauls, graffiti spraying, joy-riding…. Has it's own TV show, Limerick CSI.

Longford = Gombeen men & Lumberjacks. Trees, trees & more trees. Hobbies: Legalising bestiality and wishing they were from Leitrim.

Louth = IRA supporters, smugglers and bandits. Hobbies: Tearing through Cooley at 125MPH trying to stop the boxes of cheap vodka from falling out the window. Often referred to as being anti-Semitic but they say they just prefer "McArdles".

Mayo = Depressing, defeatist, negative, misery-laden losers, emigrate as soon as the umbilical cord is cut. Hobbies: roaring about how great they are, whinging about why nobody likes them. Home of the term - "Culchie" (Kiltymagh) & site of Europe's most misplaced International Airport.

Meath = either Dublin wannabes or mad country bucks. Hobbies: Beating Dublin at GAA and hoping that one day somebody in Dublin will actually notice, driving massive john deere’s cos they’re big, green and yellow too. home of Irelands's answer to Essex man - Navan man. Meathmen learned to walked upright in the last century, they have come a long way since in fairness.

Offaly = Bog. We put the "y" in Offal. Hobbies = exploiting bogs and later making them into tourist attractions…hats off! Noted for having the biggest mental hospital in Ireland. An Offalyman is affectionately known to Leinster's hurling royals (i.e.) Kilkenny & Wexford people as a "Biffo" = "Big Ignorant Fucker From Offaly".

Roscommon = flat county, a silage pit is a mountain. Hobbies: Sheep-stealing, favourite tome is The "Sheep Kama Sutra", they don't have a horny sheep on their crest for nothing!

Sligo = either in their 20s and a surfer or in their 80s and a granny, no in-betweens. Hobbies: Surfing and knitting wet-suits for their grand children. Link road between Mayo & Donegal.

Tipperary = promiscuous girls, Tipp does not have two different Ridings for nothing! Hobbies: Getting a flat in Dublin and losing their accents and hoping their parents don't find out. Has a town that sounds like an ambulance siren - Nenagh!

Waterford = decent honest hard-workers generally good folks and if you believe that, hah! Hobbies: Calling a strike, blowing glass, calling a strike, eating blahs. The only good thing to come out of Waterford is the road to Wexford.

Westmeath = like most midlanders, generally boring. Hobbies, much like some people up north, winning one football title and then believing they know it all about football. Home of Ireland's "Las Vegas" - Mullingar, gave us such stars as Foster & Allen, Joe Dolan & Donie Cassidy's wig.

Wexford = Brown earth you’d wanna take home in your pockets. Hobbies = selling their “home-grown” organic fruit (bought at supermarket that morning) at the side of the road in summer and ripping-off gullible Dubliners out for a drive in the country. Also beating Kilkenny in hurling and going on the piss for the rest of the summer (with the team). Home to Ireland's own version of "deliverance" - Kilmore Quay.

Wicklow = either country snobs with range rovers or poor aul sheep farmers with peak caps and a small black and white sheep dog with dirt all over him. Hobbies: setting up illegal dumps in their back lawns and denying all knowledge of that 300,000 tons of asbestos, nappies and syringes -"Never saw it till now your honour". Wicklowmen are also known as Sheep hustlers as opposed to the rustlers below in Carlow. What do you call a Wicklowman with 3 sheep? - a pimp!

Monaghan was missing, but did anyone really notice? A sad state of affairs when it's best known son was a chronic masturbator who wrote about "the stony grey soil".

To come, the remaining six counties of our lovely Island..Stay tuned!