Through green glasses

"Through green glasses" by Edmund Downey is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. It offers humorous Irish tall tales told in lively dialect, blending folklore and mock-history with playful anachronism. A genial narrator channels a homespun raconteur to recast kings, saints, and rogues in an Irish key, with figures like the swaggering fisherman Andy Merrigan and assorted historical notables at the fore. The opening of the book frames the voice: the narrator meets Dan, an illiterate but irresistible storyteller whose simple, vivid language and cheerful disdain for chronology shape every yarn. In the first tale, Andy Merrigan boasts to King Cormac that he has discovered a vast western land, bargains to sell it for cash while keeping the right to haul away its “gold,” and returns under suspicion of piracy; when ordered to fetch his foreign bride as proof, he sails into a storm and goes down in a dramatic wreck, leaving locals to muse that he may have found the New World. Next, From Portlaw to Paradise follows Paddy Power, who dies mid-absolution and banters at Heaven’s gate with a saint (revealed as St. Patrick) before St. Peter tweaks the ledger and lets him in as Portlaw’s first representative. Then King John and the Mayor delivers a Waterford spoof: the king insults the bearded mayor, must be carried ashore through mud, loses his crown in the “Pill,” and departs wearing the mayor’s battered hat.

Through green glasses, by Edmund Downey. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77138.