The Eternal

 My brother has been investigating the family tree. He's also done a DNA test. Like lopping off his head and counting the rings. Finally, a chance to blame my manifold genetic defects on some innocent people, long since safely dead. Who's shitty myopic eyes are these? Why did my hair go grey in my twenties? Where are the rest of my legs? I suppose I should thank them for the biscuit teeth, because at least I got a book out of those. And thanks for the beautiful eyelashes. It wasn't all bad. The fashionable symmetry of my features was much appreciated when I was a younger man but, equally, why am I a drunk? And can I blame that on someone other than me because, really, that would be a load off. 

That's what I'm looking for here. A way to shift some of the responsibility for my very poor decisions on some ancient dairy farmer in a smock. 

Well, the DNA results are back and they're explosive...I'm 78% Japanese!

I did NOT see that coming, but suddenly EVERYTHING makes sense. My love of calligraphy and pyjamas. The way I never feel truly comfortable in any room unless the walls are made of paper. Why I can never be bothered to actually cook my fish. 

No. I'm joking. And, I think, being a bit racist. At least some of those things are Chinese. Sorry. 

My DNA is 95% Irish. 

The other 5%? Scottish. 

Five percent is, of course, a variable, and the Scotch are basically Irish anyway (fight me) but I think we can say I'm pretty definitively 100% Celt. Celts are a modern construct, unknown to the people they describe. I'm a Gael, like my hero Asterix (himself a Welshman). Could I be a scion of the Dal Riata, whose kingdom straddled the sea between Northern Ireland and Western Scotland? Could I be a descendant of Fergus the Great, who brought the Stone of Scone - The Stone of Destiny - to Scotland? 

Sure. Why not? 

What this means is my ancestors never shifted. They've been in the same spot, marrying their cousins, for millennia. How I don't have webbed feet and a receding chin I don't know. My people have been wearing a rut in a small corner of this wet rock forever. Some of my ancestors are probably buried in New Grange or, more likely, they were obliged to build it at the pointy end of a claideamh. We were the Fir Bolg, not much liking the look of the suddenly everywhere Tuatha De Danaan, but not seeing the threat because "they look so young". 

"Excuse me, sonny. Is your dad home?" He is now. 

Still we endured. In the rain. Rutting and praying and drinking. Forever. It doesn't sound too bad, but for the English turning up and fucking us over. 

Except of course, I'm English. I'm 100% genetic Gael, but if I go into any shop in Belfast and speak, they ask me if I'm here on my holidays. Even in the Black Box these days. My parents ran away, the first generation to do so. And I came back. I've been here well over a decade, and I'm still a blow-in and a Plastic Paddy. 

Ho hum. 

My name actually means Viking, so I was hoping for a bit Scandi Noir in all that green. But my lot never saw a fjord, never murdered a monk except in anger, and never wore a horned hat when a topper fashioned into the felt facsimile of a pint of Guinness would do. We ran into battle naked but for blue paint, which I can't imagine was that intimidating given the climate. Unless the enemy thought, "My God! These guys really have nothing to lose!" And who thought of woad anyway? Given the Irish complexion, that's just blue on paler blue. Tasteful, yes, but a bit melancholy for a skirmish.  

No Scandinavian. Just Irish with an Irn-Bru top. Slainte. 

I don't really care for Guinness. I like my songs to a) have a chorus and b) eventually stop. I don't keep my whiskey in a jar - that's just perverse. There's not an iota of craic in me, and I'm not a bit lucky. If I was, I wouldn't have found out I'm 100% Irish. 

I'm joking. You people - we people - have got a great sense of humour, so I know you won't take a massive huff about a bit of ribbing from one, despite the accent, of your own. Embrace me, Ireland. I'm more Irish than you are. I'm more Irish than fucking anyone. I am the Top of the Morning. I'm Paddy McGinty's go to. I'm Danny Man.

Who's the Dagda-y? It's me. .