Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack. He lived in the countryside with his mother and a dairy cow named Daisy. His mother was a humble politician, a member of a party called Sinn Féin.
One day, Jack’s mother realised she needed more money to help finance her election campaign. She asked Jack to take Daisy down to the market to sell.
“Be careful,” she said, “the town is filled with scam artists and we all know how fucking gullible you are.”
“Thanks, mam,” he said.
But Jack paid no attention to his mother’s warnings. And when arrived at the market, he was approached by an old man, who offered him some magic beans in return for the cow.
Tut, tut, tut – oldest trick in the book.
Foolishly, Jack accepted the deal. Leaving Daisy behind, he took the beans back to his mother. Unfortunately, his mother couldn’t fund a political campaign on beans. In a fit of rage, she grabbed them from his hands and threw them out the window.
“LeBron James!” she said.
That night they went to bed worrying about what they were going to do. But the next morning, they were amazed to discover that a giant beanstalk reaching high into the clouds had sprouted out of the ground overnight.
Jack climbed the beanstalk and when he reached the top he found himself inside a tremendous castle with wide corridors, and very high ceilings, and the sort of tacky leopard-print furnishing you might find in a dead pornstar’s house.
Exploring the castle, Jack stumbled across a large white goose in a nest of solid golden eggs. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Here was the solution to all his mother’s problems! But before Jack could steal the goose, the ground started to tremble. He looked up to see a giant entering the room.
“Fee fi fo fum,” said the Giant, “I smell the blood of an Englishman.”
“First of all,” said Jack, “There’s no way you can smell blood. Secondly, I’m not English, I’m Irish.”
“Oh, well,” said the giant, “it’s all the same, isn’t it?”
And Jack said, “No, it’s not. The English oppressed us under colonial rule for 800 years, murdering countless men, women, and children, refusing to come to our aid in a time of famine, and almost completely eradicating any trace of our native language and culture.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” said the giant.
And so Jack began to explain Irish history to the giant. And by the time he finished speaking, the giant was in tears, outraged at the suffering of the Irish people. In a strange twist of fate, Jack had accidentally radicalised the giant.
The giant announced that from that day forward he would use all the golden eggs from his enchanted goose to fund the Irish Republican cause. And he promised that he would not rest until there was at last a united Ireland.
Finally, Jack and the giant parted ways as friends, their lives changed forever by their encounter.
A few months later, Jack’s mother was finally elected to the Dáil. But some of her opponents accused her of accepting illegal campaign donations from a dissident mythical creature.
Then one by one, these people began to disappear under mysterious circumstances, as if someone had lifted the roofs off their houses, reached into their beds, grabbed them by their waists, and eaten them alive in one quick bite.
Thankfully, the Gardaí could never find sufficient evidence to link Sinn Féin to the disappearances. And so Jack and his mother lived happily ever after.
The end.
