Oh estimable and sublime Chuck Feeney, may I introduce you to the University of an Irishman's Diary? I do so without intending in any way for you to reduce your charity to other Irish universities, most of which we admire unstintingly. But since you are about to disburse some €500 million to Irish colleges, we feel it would be remiss of us not to point out certain basic truths.
We are aware that you have contributed generously to the University of Limerick, which only goes to show what a liberal fellow you are. I presume you know that the University of Limerick's History Department has a course called, "The Black Death: the role played by the Feeneys in bringing it to Ireland". They seem to specialise in the rarified arts of Feenology at Limerick, because there is an entire chair given over to the subject of "Feeneys: Informers Down the Ages".
Prof Idi Amin
Until I spoke to the chair of the department of Feenology, a Professor Idi Amin, I did not know that the Feeneys had betrayed the 1798 Rising, nor that Feeneys were in the forefront of the reprisals in Wexford, and were particularly active in pitch-capping Irish patriots. But Idi assures me it is so. Indeed, he introduced me to his head of 18th-century history, a Mr Bin Laden, who told me that betrayal has always been a strong characteristic of the Feeneys throughout the ages.
I protested at this, needless to say, citing your good name as an example. Mr Bin Laden allowed himself a slight smirk of dissent, pointing out that not much could be expected of you, considering your ancestry. He found it particularly hard to forgive the activities of the Feeneys at the time of the Young Irelanders - not merely did Cathal Feeney betray all the patriots, but he also was rewarded with lands confiscated from them. According to Mr Bin Laden, this was the basis of your present fortune.
I must say, it stands greatly to your credit that you have been so indulgent towards a university which seems to have done much harm to your family name. But as you know, your generosity is not confined to Limerick. My old alma mater of UCD gets a large amount of money from you as well. Such happy days I had there, Chuck! In that distant epoch, the Feenologist there was a Cambodian by the name of Pot. He always maintained that the firing squad that shot the heroes of 1916 all had the name Feeney, because no other people could be found so low as to do the job.
RIC Auxiliaries
It was a Feeney, said Mr Pot, who formed the RIC Auxiliaries, and it was an entire tribe of Feeneys who conducted the massacre at Croke Park, in which, of course, your great-grandfather Carrol played such a prominent part. Mr Pot used to teach that it was his brother Sylvester, your great-granduncle, who shot Michael Collins. Later, he said, the two brothers discovered they had unusual appetites, developing an interest in homosexual incest. They set up home - or so Mr Pot used to say - in Harold's Cross, where Sylvester in due course gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, who inherited the family taste for sibling sex - and it was the twins' daughter, your gran, who, having debauched the Charolais, then worked her way through the entire Sisters of Mercy, and the Second Battalion Western Command. Well that's what UCD maintained.
Mr Pot soon returned to his native Camobia, where he practised the same intellectual rigour which had so distinguished him in UCD. He was replaced by an Arab gentleman named Saddam whose very first deed was to execute a student who stood up for the Feeneys. Saddam maintained that it was Oliver Cromwell Feeney who had led the B Specials at Burntollet, and that it was Whiteside Stelfox Feeney who had pressed for the execution of all Catholics in 1971.
Frankly, Chuck, I'm surprised that you actually pay for this sort of thing. Now, the last thing I'd want is to attract any of your largesse away from such deserving institutions as UL and UCD, which seem to have implicated a Feeney in every atrocity since the Middle Ages.
Works of Shakespeare
So it is no expectation of any reward that the University of an Irishman's Diary recognises the incandescent genius of the Feeney family. We honour the Feeneys because they deserve it. Thus UID has a course in "Louis Pasteur: His Debt to the Feeneys". And we have one on the influence of the Feeneys of Ballyboghill upon the young Leonardo. And the jewel in our crown is our Ph.D. course which proves conclusively that Shakespeare's works were written by a member of your family.
What? You didn't know this? Did he not sign every one of his plays with his own name, but in French: Finis? So, though we do not solicit money, Chuck, if you absolutely insist on funding this splendid project, we have a certain Ansbacher account, number available on demand, to which all seven-figure contributions are gladly accepted. In the meantime, I remain your most admiring cousin,
Kevin Feeney Myers