Border Raid

Twas a saucy business surely, and one that, in an older time, might well have put County Donegal up in arms and stained the waters of Lough Swilly pink with men's blood. Yonder they came, eight men of England's navy and that same young duke that married the king's daughter, strolling bold as brass into free Eire. "We want a navy snack," says they, marching into the Green Bay at Buncrana. "We want a typical navy snack, with plenty of steak and chips and don't say nothin' to anyone about the dook." Then off they go to the local for a pint apiece, to wet their whistle.

Mrs. Celia Shanagher and Mrs. Bridget McAnulty, the same that run the Green Bay, they wouldn't tell on a duke, now, but they could drop a gentle hint, like, to some of the neighbors. So by the time the navy boys come back for their snack, the population has turned up in such multitudes it takes the Civic Guards to hold them back. Down sits the duke and his friends to a mess of tomato soup, salmon, steak, eggs, chips, fish, jelly, pears, cream, coffee and cheese the like of which Buckingham Palace hadn't seen since Paddy weaned his pig, and all the while the guards are after restraining the onlookers.

Then at last the duke gets up, after eating three eggs with his steak. "Cheerio," he says. "We had a nice meal," he says. And what do the Irish do? As the Archangel Michael's a witness, they cheer. Cheer themselves hoarse, they do, which produces such a parching and a dryness of the entire population that, faith, by the time the young duke and his friends get back to their naval duty at Londonderry, you'd scarce find a sober breath in all Buncrana, and that's in County Donegal on the shores of Lough Swilly.

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