An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth.

This is a humorous, folkloric “Irish saying” that circulates as a drinking joke rather than a traceable remark by a single identifiable speaker. It belongs to a long tradition of Hiberno-English wit in which intoxication is treated with comic bravado and verbal ingenuity, often by redefining “drunk” in a way that preserves dignity (or at least the appearance of it). The image of clinging to a blade of grass “to keep from falling off the earth” exaggerates the drinker’s unsteadiness into a tall tale, turning loss of balance into a cosmic problem solved by a tiny, absurdly inadequate support.

The line works by comic redefinition: drunkenness is denied until the very last, ludicrous threshold—so long as the person can still grasp anything at all, he is “not drunk.” The blade of grass is a deliberately fragile prop, emphasizing how far gone the drinker really is while allowing him to claim control. The hyperbole about “falling off the earth” turns ordinary staggering into an epic struggle against gravity and the universe, a hallmark of pub humor and tall-story rhetoric. More broadly, it plays on stereotypes of Irish conviviality and verbal play, using exaggeration to make intoxication a subject of laughter rather than moralizing.