Do you promise to tell the truth?
Do you promise to tell the whole truth?
Do you promise to tell nothing but the truth?
So help you God? Spin your story Uncle Ian

Bing Crosby Barry Fitzgerald Maureen O'Hara
John MacCormack Saint Patrick Mayor James
Michael Curley Sean O'Casey James Joyce Kitty
O'Shea Lady Gregory William Butler Yeats John
Millington Synge Charles Stewart Parnell Timothy
Healy Michael Davitt Eamon de Valera Sean MacBride
Frank O'Connor Samuel Beckett George Bernard
Shaw Michael Collins and Kevin Barry

The Blarney Stone Galway Bay Dublin Rock of
Cashel Dingle Peninsula Abbey Theater Home Rule
Easter Rising Fenians Fianna Fail Aran Islands Book
of Kells Cead Mile Failte Erin Go Bragh

Green Beer Corned Beef and Cabbage Soda Bread
Potatoes Irish Jig Mother Macree When Irish Eyes
Are Smiling Where the River Shannon Flows Molly
Brannigan  "That's it m'boy."

But you haven't told me the whole truth Uncle Ian.
Let me remind you about the Irish famine
Starving children hunger misery poverty
rows of the dead a terrible silence bloated bellies
sunken eyes eating dirt or even human flesh or dogs
disease ridden children landlords exporting
grain dirges funeral pyres coffin ships decrease in
Ireland's population

Our youth will copy our denial if we do not
confront the past.

Ronald K. Burke is a professor emeritus of speech communication at Syracuse University.  He can be reached at Rbrkwho@aol.com