When Eoin O'Duffy and John Charles McQuaid were recruiting volunteers to fight for Franco in the Spanish Civil War, the former policeman wanted his gallant volunteers to wear Wehrmacht-style uniforms, but McQuaid favoured ones in light blue, in honour of the Virgin Mary, writes Kevin Myers.
"They'll be very visible if they wear sky blue, and make easier targets," protested O'Duffy.
"It is no part of my view of Catholicism that a good Catholic should be reluctant to die for his faith," replied John Charles stoutly. "Your armpit tastes delicious."
They were discussing the issue on the banks of the Boyne, where they had earlier been swimming in their pelts, that unforgettable summer of 1936; and now they were allowing the sun to dry them off. John Charles plucked a long blade of grass and traced it down Eoin's muscular body. O'Duffy groaned, and declared: "Stop it."
"I will," replied John Charles, "if you can catch me." With that he rose and sprinted along the water's edge, and Eoin raced after him, their happy cries ringing over the river's torpid flow.
"My own Charlemagne"
"Hmmm, that was good," groaned John Charles some time later. "You're always so manly after you've discussed military matters. But as you know better than anyone, my own Charlemagne, Communism must be fought, tooth and nail, at every turn."
O'Duffy thought for a while. "Communism," he agreed, "and the Joos."
"The Jews. Ah yes the Jews. The Protestants are bad enough, but we know how they arrived here: by force of arms and on Henry VIII's coat-tails. But what enervating febrility caused us to permit our Hebraic friends to pitch their nomads' tents and their money-changing stalls here in good Catholic Ireland?"
O'Duffy groaned beside him. "When you use language like that, you know what it does to me?"
"I do, my manly Galahad," whispered John Charles, rolling onto his stomach.
Later, as they were driving into Dublin, they returned to the subject of the fatal flaws in the Irish State, as bequeathed it by history. Communists, Jews, Protestants, liberals: they were everywhere. "And there's worse," said McQuaid in a low, conspiratorial voice.
"There can't be worse, surely to God," protested Eoin loudly.
"There can. There's whores. Everywhere."
"Hoo-ers? Hoo-ers? Here in Holy Ireland? Never!" O'Duffy thought for a while before adding: "And anyway, what are hoo-ers?"
"Whores are fallen women, dearest, who have sexual relations with men outside wedlock." John Charles continued to speak, but his words were drowned by the sound of his companion getting violently sick out of the car window.
"You are so good, good," whispered McQuaid later to his pallid friend. "And so little you know of the wicked ways of the world! Let me teach you, my gallant Roland."
So John Charles promptly decided to take his friend to a place of many whores: the Magdalena laundry, where unmarried girls were detained for the duration of their pregnancy, after which their babies were confiscated, to be raised as good Catholics in Irish orphanages, and the girls were despatched to England.
"Their base and insatiable appetites equip them admirably for life on the streets there," explained the priest happily. "It's a very economical solution to a rather tiresome problem."
When they arrived at the laundry, they found a small army of heavily pregnant girls in rags, vigorously scrubbing the front drive with toothbrushes and intoning: "I am impure, I am impure," while a Sister of the Divine Flagellants prowled their ranks, flicking their raised buttocks with a bloodied cat o' nine tails.
"Interesting," said O'Duffy, with a slight catch in his voice. "Is there any chance...."
Birthing room
John Charles smiled. "I'm sure Mother Superior will let us flog a couple. She needs a break. She can't do them all, though God knows she tries: a very model of Irish Catholic womanhood. Ah. Here's the maternity ward. By the way, you should know that one of the characteristics of bastards is that a great number of are born with a membranous web around the scalp."
The two entered a large, ice-cold hut with a leaking roof, where numerous howling whores were giving birth on the earthen floor.
And sure enough, an extraordinary number of the infants were emerging with a curious gauze over their faces: yet the very occasional girl was giving birth not to an infant, but to a large blue gas canister.
"Good God!" cried O'Duffy, reeling. "What on earth is going on?"
"Empirical proof of one of the central beliefs of our faith," announced John Charles proudly. "Halleluiah! Praise be to God for revealing to us, His One Abiding Truth: For many are cauled, but few are Kosan."