UNESCO AWARD MCCARTHY'S OF COORE 'WORLD HERITAGE' STATUS

By Caoimhín Mires

The Drone News can reveal that UNESCO has unanimously decided to award its coveted World Heritage Site status to a rural Co Clare pub: McCarthy’s of Coore.

The award follows a late night visit to the site by UNESCO officials during the festivities associated with the Willie Clancy Summer School.

A spokesperson for the organisation, Dr. Felix Dubois, a highly celebrated anthropologist, said that a UNESCO fact-finding mission had rarely found such a concentration of unique cultural practices localised in one place:

“We were completely blown away by what we saw at Coore in the early hours of the morning. There were several distinctly new dialects of Hiberno-English being spoken by one man alone, mostly to himself, and he actually swore in what sounded like ancient Hebrew when he spilled his can of lukewarm Heineken before curling up under a table presumably to commune with his totem animal or gods.”

What initially appeared to be set dancing to the untrained eye took on ritualistic significance as the night wore on with the introduction to the dancing area of blood sacrifice, urine and alcoholic libations to otherworldly beings.

Several dancers and musicians attained ecstatic trance-like states and were completely unaware of strong outside stimuli such as their own body odour, the sporadic beatings they occasionally gave each other, and the piercing sound of several wet tuned accordions. It is clearly a site retaining strong elements of Ireland’s ancient shamanic religious heritage.

The staff and owners of McCarthy’s were unavailable for comment having just left for a five and a half month holiday in Tenerife, but one local suggested that the pub’s new status would likely result in an increase in the cost of minibus taxi fare to Coore from Miltown . He predicted the standard 5 Euro per person fare could rocket to as much as 6.50 or even 7 Euro in coming years.