"Glorious, pious and immortal memory": in Nestor
Stephen thinks of the Orange
toast that Protestant loyalists made (and still make?) to
their savior William of Orange,
who defeated the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the
Boyne in 1690.
There are many forms of the toast. One of them, recorded on
FinnegansWiki (www.finnegansweb.com), goes as follows: "Here's
to the glorious, pious and immortal memory
of the great and good King William III, Prince of Orange, who
saved us from rogues and roguery, slaves and slavery, knaves
and knavery, Popes and Popery, brass money and wooden
shoes. And whoever denies this toast may he be slammed,
crammed and jammed into the muzzle of the great gun of Athlone, and the gun fired
into the Pope's belly, and the Pope into the Devil's belly,
and the Devil into Hell, and the door locked, and the key in
an Orangeman's pocket, and may we never lack a brisk
Protestant boy to kick the arse of a Papist, and here's a fart
for the Bishop of Cork."
The site glosses the "wooden shoes" as referring to French
Catholic persecutors of the Huguenots, and "the Bishop of
Cork" as the Protestant Bishop of Cork who preached against
the practice of toasting the dead, "believing it to be akin to
the Popish custom of saying Mass for the dead."
