✼✻✺✹✸✷✶✵✴❄❅❆❇❈❉❊❋✼✻✼✻✺

Seven wise men with knowledge so fine,
created a pussy to their design.


1.-First was a butcher, with smart wit,
using a knife, he gave it a slit,

2.-Second was a carpenter, strong and bold,
with a hammer and chisel, he gave it a hole,

3.-Third was a tailor, tall and thin,
by using red velvet, he lined it within,

4.-Fourth was a hunter, short and stout,
with a piece of fox fur, he lined it without,

5.-Fifth was a fisherman, nasty as hell,
threw in a fish and gave it a smell,

6.-Sixth was a preacher, whose name was McGee,
touched it and blessed it, and said it could pee,

Last was a sailor, dirty little runt,
who sucked it and f*** it, and called it a ****.

✼✻✺✹✸✷✶✵✴❄❅❆❇❈❉❊❋✼✻✺✹✸✷

Kevin Gerard Barry (Irish: Caoimhín de Barra; 20 January 1902 - 1 November 1920) was the first Republican to be executed by the British since the leaders of the Easter Rising. Barry was sentenced to death for his part in an IRA operation which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers.

Barry's death is considered a watershed moment in the Irish conflict. His execution outraged public opinion in Ireland and throughout the world, because of his youth. The timing of his death was also crucial, in that his hanging came only days after the death on hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney - the Republican Lord Mayor of Cork - and brought public opinion to fever-pitch. His treatment and death attracted great international attention and attempts were made by U.S., British, and Vatican officials to secure a reprieve. His execution and MacSwiney's death precipitated a dramatic escalation in violence as the Irish War of Independence entered its most bloody phase.

Because of his refusal to inform on his comrades while under torture, Kevin Barry was to become one of the most celebrated of Republican martyrs. A ballad bearing his name, relating the story of his execution, is popular to this day.

Early life

Kevin Barry was born on 20 January 1902, at 8 Fleet Street Dublin. The son of Thomas and Mary (née Dowling) Barry, he was the fourth of seven children, two boys and five sisters. He was baptised in St. Andrews Church, Westland Row. Thomas Barry Snr. worked on the family farm at Tombeagh, Hacketstown, County Carlow, and ran a dairy business from Fleet Street. Thomas died in 1908 at the age of 56.

His mother came from Drumguin, also in County Carlow, and on the death of her husband, moved the family to Tombeagh. As a child Kevin liked country life, and went to the national school in Rathvilly. On returning to Dublin, he attended St. Mary’s College, Rathmines, until the school closed in the summer of 1916.

When he was thirteen, he attended a commemoration for the Manchester Martyrs. The three men, members of the Fenian Brotherhood, were hanged in England in 1867, and whose cry of “God Save Ireland,” had a strong effect on him. Afterwards he wished to join Countess Markievicz’s Fianna na hEireann, but was dissuaded by his family.

From St. Mary’s College he then transferred to Belvedere College, where he was a member of the championship Junior Rugby Cup team, and earned a place on the senior team. In 1918 he became secretary of the school hurling club which had just been formed, and was one of their most enthusiastic players.

Father Thomas Counihan, S.J., his science and mathematics teacher, said of him: “He was a dour kind of lad. But once he got down to something he went straight ahead… There was no waving of flags with him, but he was sincere and intense.”

Notwithstanding his many activities, he did not neglect his studies. He won a merit-based scholarship given annually by Dublin Corporation, which allowed him to become a student of medicine at UCD.

He entered University College Dublin in 1919. A fellow student described him then as “open-handed, open-hearted and generous to a fault and first in every manly exercise.”Much like other students he liked to go dancing, and to the theatre, and was popular, making friends easily. His closest friend at college was Gerry MacAleer, from Dungannon, who he had first met in Belvedere. Although other friends included Frank Flood, Tom Kissane and Mick Robinson, who unknown to many in the college, were, with Barry, IRA volunteers

In October 1917, during his second year at Belvedere College, aged 15, he joined the IRA. Assigned originally to ‘C’ Company 1st Battalion, based on the north side of Dublin, he later transferred to the newly formed ‘H’ Company, under the command of Capt. Seamus Kavanagh.

His first job as a member of the IRA was delivering mobilisation orders around the city. Along with other volunteers he trained in a number of

Whisky is, in its most basic sense, a spirit that is distilled from grain. Sometimes the grain has been malted, sometimes not. It is aged, often for long periods of time, in wooden barrels (usually oak). This barrel-aging smoothes the rough palate of the raw spirit and adds aromatic and flavoring nuances along and the base amber hue, all of which set whiskies apart from white grain spirits such as Vodka, Gin and Aquavit, which are distilled closer to neutrality in taste, and then generally not aged in wood.

The basis of Scotch whisky is the heather-flavored ales made from barley malt that the Picts and their prehistoric ancestors brewed. Archeologists have found evidence of such brewing dating back to at least 2000 B.C. This ale (which is still produced today by at least one Scottish microbrewer) was low in alcohol and not very stable.

Starting in the ninth century, Irish monks arrived in Scotland to Christianize their Celtic brethren. Along with the Word of the Lord they brought the first primitive stills, which they had picked up during their proselytizing visits to mainland Europe during the Dark Ages. The local Picts soon found that they could create a stable alcoholic beverage by distilling their heather ale. Simple stills came to be found in most rural homesteads, and homemade whisky became an integral part of Gaelic culture.

As long as Scottish kings ruled the country from Edinburgh the status quo of whisky as just another farm product was more or less maintained. But the Act of Union in 1707 that combined England, Wales, and Scotland into the United Kingdom altered the Scotch whisky scene forever. The London government soon levied excise taxes on Scottish-made whisky (while at the same time cutting the taxes on English gin). The result was a predictable boom in illicit distilling. In 1790s Edinburgh it was estimated that over 400 illegal stills competed with just eight licensed distilleries. A number of present-day Scottish distilleries, particularly in the Highlands, have their origins in such illicit operations.

The Excise Act of 1823 reduced taxes on Scotch whisky to a tolerable degree. This act coincided with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and entrepreneurs were soon building new, state-of-the-art distilleries. The local moonshiners (called smugglers) did not go quietly. Some of the first licensed distillers in rural locations were threatened by their illicit peers, but in the end production efficiencies and the rule of law won out. The whisky that came from these distilleries was made primarily from malted barley that had been kiln-dried over peat fires. The smoke from these peat fires gave the malt a distinctive tang that made the Scottish product instantly identifiable by whisky drinkers all over the world.

The 19th century brought a rush of changes to the Scotch whisky industry. The introduction of column stills early in the 1830s led to the creation of grain whisky, a bland spirit made primarily from unmalted grains such as corn. Grain whisky in turn led to the creation of blended Scotch whisky in the late 1860s. The smooth blandness of the grain whisky toned down the assertive smoky character of the malt whiskies.

The resulting blended whisky proved to be milder and more acceptable to foreign consumers, particularly the English, who turned to Scotch whisky in the 1870s when a phylloxera infestation in the vineyards of Europe disrupted supplies of Cognac and Port—two of the mainstays of civilized living. Malt whisky distilleries were bought up by blending companies and their output was blended with grain whiskies to create the great blended brands that have come to dominate the market. The malt whisky distilleries took a back seat to these brands and sold most or, in some cases, all of their production to the blenders. But the recent popular revival of malt whiskies has led most of the distilleries to come out with bottlings of their own products.

By the 1970s international liqu