Murphy's pose in the photograph — the start of a raised fist and a furtive glance off-camera — looked as if he was fixing for a fight, and even his tall hat was strikingly similar to the one in Manet's painting. Now recognized as a masterpiece, The Absinthe Drinker was rejected by the Paris Salon because the painting featured an unsentimentalized 'low' character of the Parisian streets, a drunken rag picker whose disheveled image could hardly serve to uplift the public. The jury also hated Manet's palette, composition and nonacademic brush strokes. The peculiar stance of Manet's drinker is said by some critics to portray insanity, or more probably the euphoric effects of absinthe itself — that highly potent liquor laced with herbal stimulants which produced a state favored by artists and poets.

Now, as enchanting as the Green Fairy may be (and green though it is), an Irish giant would certainly prefer to wet his whistle — especially after presiding over the parade on St. Patrick's Day — with a drop of the stuff, uisce beatha, the water of life, the juice of the barley that's as pure and gentle as mother's milk itself. So here we see Murphy in some dive, an empty bottle of Tullamore Dew and a tumbler of the craythur replacing Manet's drink of choice, and the heat of the liquor encouraging our giant to sort out some boyo who either insulted his sainted mother or asked one too many times, “How's the weather up there?”