ART OF STORYTELLING A STOUT TRADITION AMONG THE IRISH.

Byline: James Bemis Commentary

Ask people what the favorite pastime of the Irish is, and you're likely to get a variety of answers: singing, dancing, drinking and maybe even fishing.

They're all wrong. It's storytelling.

Ireland is first and foremost the land of the bard, the ancient cornerstone of Irish cultural unity. Bards were the repositories of the Celtic tribes' traditional wisdom, said to possess supernatural powers of insight and prophecy.

Any Irish storyteller worth his salt fancies himself a direct descendant of these heroic bards. That's why so many Irishmen seem full of blarney - it's in their blood.

On St. Patrick's Day in my household, this grand tradition continues. We start the day by describing how the fairies came to Ireland, from Herminie Kavanagh's book, ``Darby O'Gill and the Good People.''

All was peaceful in heaven, it seems, until a ruckus began between the good and bad angels. The king of the fairies warned his subjects to stay out of this dispute between right and wrong.

A great battle began with a crash and a roar, and the fairies hid until the good angels had won. By not taking sides, the fairies were found unfit for heaven but weren't sent to hell either. Instead, they were sent someplace in between - to Earth.

Due to the angels' mercy, the fairies were allowed to pick the kind of people they would live amongst. ``We want to live where the men are brave and the women good,'' the fairy king said, ``and all are fond of jollity, like singing and fighting. The people must be poor and persecuted, too, because the rich have no fun in them.'' The good angels agreed.

So when the fairies were cast out of heaven, they landed on a lovely green island that glimmered and laughed and sparkled in the middle of the sea.

By this time now, the corned beef's boiling, and the storyteller's getting mighty thirsty, which is why, I suppose, God made Guinness stout.

With corned beef and black beer, we watch John Ford's ``The Quiet Man,'' the best film ever made about the Irish. (Movies are, of course, simply a modern form of storytelling.)

Before going to bed, the wee ones hear the story of Erin's beloved St. Patrick, a tale that warms an Irish heart quicker than a blazing hearth. All of Irish history converges on the legend of St. Patrick - where mythic past met European future, where Celtic sword met Christian cross, where heaven's rainbow bent to kiss its earthly realm.

St. Patrick was actually an Englishman - but he's long since been forgiven for that. At 16, Patrick was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave.

During his captivity, he experienced a spiritual awakening, eventually escaping to Britain. After becoming a Catholic bishop, Patrick received a calling to spread Christianity and civilization back in Ireland, where his legend began.

St. Patrick is associated with many famous stories, including outperforming the druids in a tournament of miracles, thereby winning the right to preach Christianity in Ireland; driving the snakes into the sea; and raising several people, including his father, from the dead.

Most popular, though, is the tale of the shamrock. In teaching about the Trinity, the Christian doctrine of three persons in one God, the great saint held up a shamrock, explaining the three leaves represented the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while the stem was the godhead itself from which they proceeded. Thus, the shamrock became the symbol of Ireland and the faith of her people.

Legends like these represent humanity's oldest tradition of culture and thought. Western man's great achievement was to write these stories down, thus preserving the wisdom of the past for the benefit of the future.

More than drinking green beer and wearing funny hats, St. Patrick's Day is a chance for modern bards to pay respect to their cultural inheritance. For whenever tales are read by the fireside, sung at the campsite or told by the bedside, we awaken our ancestors' love of faith and hope, of courage and beauty in a new generation of listeners.