Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies' heads. Where they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization.
Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.
Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.
Our heroes of the former days deserved and gained their never-fading bays.