May the devil chase you every day of your life and never catch you.

This line is commonly presented as an “Irish toast” or “Irish blessing,” circulating in oral tradition and later in print collections of toasts, jokes, and folk sayings. It is typically used in convivial settings—pubs, weddings, wakes, or friendly gatherings—where mock-curses function as affectionate banter rather than malice. The phrasing draws on a long Irish and broader Celtic tradition of playful imprecations (“may you…”) that invert the form of a curse into a wish for resilience and good fortune. Because it is folkloric and widely transmitted, it is difficult to tie to a single speaker, date, or first publication with certainty.

A wry, backhanded “blessing” in the style of an Irish toast: it invokes the devil—symbol of misfortune, temptation, or trouble—as a pursuer, but turns the curse into a kind of protection by wishing he never succeeds. The speaker effectively hopes the listener will always stay just out of reach of harm: threatened enough to keep moving, alert, and spirited, yet never actually overtaken. Like many pub toasts and folk sayings, it mixes humor with superstition, using exaggeration and the figure of the devil to dramatize everyday adversity and the wish for resilience.

1) “May the devil chase you all your life and never catch you.”
2) “May the devil chase you, and may you never be caught.”
3) “May the devil chase you every day, and never catch you.”