A refreshing ditch in Dregish

An Omagh pupil, who achieved eight GCSEs and earned a gold fainne at a Donegal gaeltacht at the age of 15, has published a scientific paper explaining the mountain of health benefits of drinking ditch water anywhere in Ireland apart from Roscommon and Wicklow.

Rory McGinn (16) collated his data over a period of 15 days, experimenting on his grandparents and aunts or uncles who didn’t know they were drinking ditch water in their tea. McGinn made sure a wide sample was used in his investigation, collecting from ditches in Killyclogher, Tattyreagh, Cookstown and Dublin.

He explains:

“I was thinking about the rain and stuff and how it’s pure and not riddled with additives and sweeteners and that. So I first thought about waterfalls but there are no waterfalls in Ireland so I went to the next ready-made sample, ditches.”

McGinn explained how he collected over 55 gallons of ditch water in home heating oil cannisters his father kept around the back of their outside toilet-house. Over a period of time, he replaced house tap water with his stash of water when making tea and noted down the results:

“It made a quare difference to my grandparents. They’d be always complaining about not being able to go to the toilet and sure as soon as I fed them my stuff they were never off it. It was a miracle. It’s was just a stroke of bad luck that they also developed a wretched vomiting bug that had been going around I’d imagine. In fact my granny is in the hospital on a drip but as soon as she gets out I’ll ply her with more of my stuff and that’ll really clean her out.”

McGinn has warned against drinking ditch water in Roscommon and Wicklow as he has never visited those places and cannot verify the quality.