Giving Good Carrickfergus

As you no doubt know by now, whether or not you care to, HRH The Crown Grandprince is also Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, and — no, really — Baron Carrickfergus, titles bestowed upon His Royal Male Pattern Baldness by HM The Corgi Wrangler, and scandalously proving that she’s been watching more Monty Python than Buckingham Palace has let on.

Perhaps it’s one of those state secrets only Prime Ministers are told upon assuming office. Like the existence of witches.

We of course were immediately consumed by a desire to learn more about the barony, since we don’t know which sketch it’s derived from. (“Baron Spamshire” would have been too obvious, and we’re sure HM dismissed it the moment Prince Philip suggested it.)

The Official Royal Wedding Website — yes, there is such a thing — informs us that “The 3rd Marquess of Donegall was created Baron Ennishowen and Carrickfergus, of Ennishowen, co: Donegal and Carrickfergus, co: Antrim”, but that proving the most impenetrable sentence we’ve read all week, we turned instead to Wikipedia, which told us of an Irish folk song by that name, “about a man being cuckolded, a bawdy and humorous ditty.”

Wikipedia even provided the Irish lyrics. In Irish. Without translation.

Sure, we could have Babelfished them, but we wanted an authoritative translation, since linking an Irish bawdy song to HM Not Helen Mirren deserved no less.

And that’s when we discovered what might be The Longest Running Thread in Internet History: “Help: Origins of Carrickfergus”, launched January 3, 2000, latest comment February 14, 2011.

Which didn’t answer our question about the lyrics. But the answer might involve a young, drunken Peter O’Toole. And if that’s as close as we get to a solution, well, it’s not a bad place to give up.