Before I leave for Bard to see Ben, I have a little belated gift from my mother, which she emailed to me today:

Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over
by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and
bruised and he's walking with a limp.
"What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender.
"Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy.
"That little sod, O'Conner?" says Sean. "He couldn't do that to you, he must
have had something in his hand."
"That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin'he
gave me with it."
"Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself. Didn't you have
something in your hand?"
"That I did," said Paddy. "Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of beauty it
is, but useless in a fight."

Are all Irish jokes so man-centric? She also sent:

Mary Clancy goes up to Father O'Grady's after his Sunday morning service, and
she's in tears.
He says, "So what's bothering you, Mary my dear?"
She says, "Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last
night."
The priest says, "Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, did he have any last
requests?" She says, "That he did, Father..."
The priest says, "What did he ask, Mary?"
She says, "He said, 'Please Mary, put down that damn gun!'"