Sams Salon: Sympathy for the Devilthe Good, the Bad and the Wicked December 3, 2009

In addition to his surprise appearance in The Seafarer, The Prince of Darkness looms large in Irish literature and folkloreas do his fellow travelers the Pooka, the Banshee, fairies, leprechauns and Dracula.Hosting is Dr. Marianne McDonald, an opinionated scholar from UCSD, who carries an Irish passport to prove shes mastered blarney-speak and who regularly gets lost in the hills and mists of the emerald isle. McDonald hosts a conversation about all things supernatural and Irish with two former residents of the island: Denys Horgan, who grew up in the shadow of the Hellfire Club in the Dublin Mountains, where the devil really did appear to a bunch of drunken gamblers in the 1700s; and Fergal ODoherty, the youngest of nine brothers from Derry, Northern Ireland, who has lived and taught Irish literature and writing classes at Palomar College for ten years. The Salon begins with the popular Irish toast, May you be in Heaven a full half hour before the Devil knows youre dead.