Heart Beat: Doubtless children, many of you are familiar with the song, There are fairies at the bottom of the garden. If you are not, then I will give you one verse:
There are fairies at the bottom of the garden
Dancing in the breeze
There are fairies at the bottom of the garden
Swingin' in the breeze
You might think that I'm crazy
But if you come with me
You might think that I'm crazy
But just you wait and see.
This story is all about fairies, good and bad, about elves, gnomes, pixies, etc and about our native variety, the flourishing leprechaun. You will have noticed that over the last little while, all sorts of coloured pieces of paper have appeared as if by magic on lampposts, telegraph poles and maybe even the trees at the bottom of your garden.
Grown-ups call these posters, and they have pictures of happy smiling people on them. The spells necessary to make these things appear are apparently quite easy; making them disappear is another much harder spell. It is all part of a mysterious grown-up game that is only played at election time.
An election is the time when all the mammies and daddies decide which group of wizards are going to rule in our little land. These happy smiling people on the posters are fairies or rather wannabe fairies. They just want to do good and give you all sorts of nice things. All they want in return is that your mammy and daddy give them a little thing called a vote on June 11th.
If they collect enough of these votes, they will become fully fledged fairies on the bottom rung of the ladder. If not, they will simply fade away, I think.
There are also a more senior group who want to become Grand European Wizards but nobody seems to know exactly what they do. One should only whisper about them, as they may set you aside or change you into an endangered species or force that unmentionable thing called equality on you.
As for the others, if they become fairies, they will change the name of our little island and we will be known henceforth as Hy-Brasil the isle of the Blest. Yes, honestly cross my heart and hope to die.
Now I have to say children that there are one or two surly disbelievers who don't believe in fairies, but these are the same kind of people who don't believe in Santa either (by the way Santa is only an assumed name, his real name is Charlie and he used to live at the North Pole before he was relocated to Kildare before an election).
An interesting thing about these fairies is that they belong to different tribes. The name of the tribe used to be emblazoned on the poster, together with the photograph of the fairy. Nowadays you would need a telescope to find it, and you might wonder why. Well, sadly some of those tribes behaved so badly and annoyed everybody so much by not keeping their promises, that some fairies are afraid that they might not get their wings if people thought they belonged to that tribe.
This I know is very complicated and there are loads of grown-ups who say that all fairies are the same and why should they vote for any of them. They would even claim that all these fairies really want is to get close to the crock of gold, and maybe even get a piece of the action. These uncouth people would even say that they all conspire to give the rest of us a crock of a different kind, and make us believe we've never had it so good.
It really is all about the control of the crock of gold, and it's for the benefit of the fairies of the tribe and their friends. This control is exerted through spells, which can be woven so expertly that you can believe that you yourself can live with the elves and pixies.
The knowing ones refer to this as being "away with the fairies".
But children, you must promise not to wake up and ask questions as everything could vanish, and another crowd of trolls, gremlins and bad fairies could take over and things would be very bad. On your knees to say your prayers now, and thank God for our wonderful chief wizard Bertie and his council.
Don't be afraid that our happiness will come to an end, a junior fairy called Ned assured us that that his tribe Fianna Fáil would never be in opposition again (ie. in outer darkness). And even more reassuring, a minister fairy, very important, assured us that his tribe could have Jack Frost or Winnie the Pooh elected in Munster.
I suppose that depends on how you spell the last word; it becomes more plausible if the h in Pooh is omitted.
Meanwhile children, save up your pennies and give a nice present to these caring little folk. I would suggest the History of the Thousand Year Reich and specially for fairy Ned a copy of Shelley's poem Ozymandias.
"Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair."
Yes, Shelley could have been talking about our lot of fairies, I would like to believe shower is the collective noun.
• Dr Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.