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Saint Patrick Found Parts Of Tyrone Hard To Convert, Especially Brackaville
St Patrick, pointing at the ground
Recent ecclesiastical papers released under the 1500 year rule at Trinity College in Dublin have revealed that St Patrick admitted he had his work cut out making Tyrone natives to give up their Pagan ways and embrace Christianity, predominately in Newmills, Pomeroy and Brackaville.
Written in Latin, St Patrick penned a letter to a mate in Wales detailing his frustration and exasperation at the heathen way of life in and around Brackaville and at once stage remarked that it’d be ‘easier to take the wet from water than to get them boys to pray even for a second’. Latin expert, Dr Patrick Mossey, translated his first short letter in its entirety:
Dear Alad,
This is turning out to be some handling. Converting Ardboe was tough. They worshipped the pollan fish before I arrived. A man fired a dog at me through the window of a pub in Coagh. But none of that compares to the troubles I’m having in Brackaville. These people are something else, lad. Twice I’ve tried to preach from the hill on the Derryvale Road and it’d be going well initially. Then a shower of women from Edendork would arrive and the orgies would start. I’d be shouting over the mass of bare arses. Deadly annoying, Alad.
They still sacrifice things there y’know. Wolves, deer, Armagh people. I’m thinking of calling it a day and hoping the Coalisland ones marry into this area, bringing their more refined ways with them. Ach I’ll miss the craic a bit at Campbell’s shebeen but God didn’t send me to gulp down the black stuff in Brackaville.
Yours, Patrick.
Although little evidence remains in Brackaville of St Patrick’s failed attempt to Christianise the area, some of the older members of the community do remember something of a boy called Patrick who tried to do something here but admit that might have been the lignite man they ignored in 1984.
Brackaville Husband and Wife Still Arguing The Bit Out. Record Broken.
McAlindens arguing about wheaten bread
A Brackaville couple have set a Guinness World Record after a non-stop arguing session lasting nine days, breaking the previous record set in Brazillia in 1985. Felix and Marjorie McAlinden began arguing two weeks ago after Felix’s failure to bring home wheaten bread from the shops in Coalisland for the second time in a month. In a straw that broke the camel’s back, neighbours maintain that Marjorie let rip on Felix with an outpouring of grief encompassing incidents as far back as their honeymoon in Omeath 15 years ago. Next door neighbour, Gerry Turtle, says he heard the whole thing from the beginning.
“Before the wheaten incident, they seemed like the ideal couple. It was all smiles and hand-holding – something you don’t see a lot of in East Tyrone to be honest. Then, when Felix brought back the milk and firelighters but no wheaten, all hell broke loose. The walls are thin here. I could hear her tapping the table and then quietly, at first, saying “you good for nothing oul bollocks. That’s twice since Christmas. Wheaten f**kin bread. Milk, firelighters and wheaten f**kin bread.” It went on in that vein all night. It was savage stuff altogether, much worse than that couple in Fr Ted.”
The Brackaville community have welcomed the news, claiming one over Coalisland whose only world record was in 1982 when a young lad was judged to look the most like Shakin Stevens. Avid walker Pauline Herron told us:
“You should see the looks of the ‘Island ones. They won’t even talk to us now just because the McAlindens have put Brackaville on the world map. Shakin Stevens knows where he can shove it.”
Having been told by the Guinness company that they were now the record holders, the McAlindens ignored the accolade and continued to argue about Facebook and the fact that Marjorie keeps making Felix look at pictures of babies he doesn’t know.
Brocagh Man Fights Shark In Roughan Lough. No Witnesses.
Artist’s impression of Davidson and Roughan shark
A Brocagh bulb-fitter, Dessie Davidson, yesterday claimed to have beaten off a ‘baste of a shark’ during a charity swim on St Stephen’s Day in Roughan Lough, just outside Newmills. Roughan officials are now investigating the incident and have warned people not to take to the lough unless they feel confident of beating a shark in a scuffle. Davidson, 46, was reportedly shaken up after the incident but has since managed to calm his nerves with an ‘unmerciful feed of stout’.
“Jays it was deadly like. I was swimming away, raising money for the new Mountjoy Donkey Sanctuary, when I felt a presence behind me. I turned and before I knew it I was in a full blown fist-fight with this shark. I don’t think it was local. It was pummelling away with its big leathery fins but I was giving it as good as I got. It was like punching leather at times and I could hear the yelps out of it after I dished out an uppercut or kidney punch. We both drew blood but it swam off first so I’d say I got the better of it. It was a traumatic experience and I’ve been on the batter since. I don’t think it was a swan. Nearly sure about that.”
Although there were no witnesses, Newmills knitting expert Greta Gordon (88) contacted the BBC last night to relate the story of being attacked by a dragon in the grounds of the castle last year during the Chinese New Year festivities. Roughan Castle Security Officals remain sceptical about the incident and maintain it could be Harry Campbell from Brackaville larking about in the shark costume he said he was getting for Christmas.
“No one has been beheaded in the castle since 1641. However, that could change if we find out Davidson was full drunk at the time and just got tangled up in seaweed,” claimed Lough manager Sir William Churchbottom.
He also announced that you can buy ‘I saw the Roughan shark’ mugs and tshirts up at the lough from today.
Coalisland Crowd Storm Brackaville Demanding Removal Of Flag
A tense Brackaville, earlier.
Inspired by the goings on at the City Hall in Belfast earlier in the week, a group calling themselves the Coalisland Restoration Appreciation Party (CRAP) have stormed the Brackaville Social Club tonight, demanding that the Brackaville Owen Roes flag hanging from the guttering is removed before Monday morning or they ‘take her down’ themselves. CRAP spokesman, Jab Herron, claimed they were willing to tolerate the flying of the flag in the midst of the local club’s failed assault on the Ulster title but now that it was at an end, there was no reason to keep it up.
“It’s bloody ridiculous. Brackaville is really the outskirts of Coalisland. We call it inner-city Coalisland where the shanty town type families scrape together a living by doing odd jobs like collecting golf balls. Now and again we do tours out to Brackaville for the Primate Dixon ones to show them what happens if you don’t do your sums and learn the english. Recently, we discovered that a few Brackaville residents were making forays into Coalisland under the cover of darkness. They were probably drinking the slops in bars or hanging around the back of Landi’s for scraps. We need to be vigilant about that. However, this flag flying craic must stop. Sometimes we have to travel through Brackaville to get to other places. We don’t need to see those dirty flags goading us. Provocation, all from a movement to follow a team bate by a river in Armagh.”
Brackaville Disaster Fund spokesman, Harry Gillis, sees it differently.
“Them fcukers would paint over us if they could. We are Brackaville. We are a people. This great run that the Owen Roes lads performed was a real lift for the community. Ok, we’ve had to start us a disaster fund to cover the expenses of every family in Brackaville heading to the final last week, but we can survive without tourism from the Island. We have the golf course and a lock of other lads doing stuff like welding. Them hoors are just jealous that we had Sean McNally, probably the best footballer in Tyrone ever after Iggy Jones. We shall not be moved. The flag stays. No surrender.”
CRAP have given Brackaville 48 hours to comply or they will dam Barrack Street, cutting off vital supplies like soda bread and the Irish News.
Brackaville Woman Gives Husband Pasta
Brackaville, an outer-Coalisland nether region that most people just drive through, was awash with rumour last night that one of their favourite sons didn’t get his Kerr’s Pinks after work. Patsy Rea, an aged Brackaville labourer, was expecting his daily dose of potatoes, cabbage and bacon but was reportedly furiously enraged to be faced with a plate of curly pasta and a mild salsa sauce. In an attempt to ‘get with the times’, his wife Maisie dished out the unique meal shortly after the Angelus on the wireless, having watched ‘one of them cooking programmes’ on RTE earlier in the day.
“Ask any man”, Rea told us, “and he’ll tell you that all a brickie thinks about from 3pm onwards is the big feed a spuds. It’s what keeps ye going. Like today I was digging a hole again. I’ve been digging the same hole for three months now. To come home after that and to have to look at this oul hatchet-faced bitch is one thing but then to be presented some some kind of foreign shite on a plate. Well, no man could take that.”
Patsy Rea on the rampage
Neighbours reported that Rea went into a frenzied rage through all the gardens in the estate, pulling trees and plants out by the root and shouting obscenities directed at his wife and life in general.
“I was frightened at first”, one neighbour told us. “We had just sat down to watch The One Show after a tremendous gorge of Greek spuds. Out of the side of my eye I saw my wife’s prize dahlias soaring through the sky. I headed out to give Patsy a good hiding until he told me about the pasta. Sure it’s like a death in the family. I couldn’t even imagine his resentment and I can tell you now – I’d completely wreck Brackaville and half of Coalisland if I was given a plate of that shit.”
Rea eventually calmed down and ate the pasta, claiming afterwards that “it wasn’t bad.”
Tyrone Tribulations 