May
You Die In Ireland
By
Michael John Geraghty
“St. Patrick
was a gentleman who came from decent people”, sings Christy
Moore, the legendary Irish balladeer and song writer, “he
built a church in Dublin town and put it on a steeple.” “His
father was a Gallagher, his mother was a Grady” continues
Moore who is better informed than most about the legendary saint
who is certainly a legend but may never have been a saint.
In actual fact,
no one really knows where Patrick came from, who he was, or if he
even ever existed. To make matters worse some modern scholars even
go as far as to say there were two, three, four, or even more St.
Patricks, that none of them brought Christianity to Ireland because
it was already there when they arrived, and that the image of the
great Irish apostle was invented by the Celtic church as part of
its propaganda campaign in the dispute - about the date of Easter
and the shape of the tonsure – with the Church of Rome that
ended at the 7th century Synod of Whitby.
To make matters
worse still, most of what is said about Patrick is simply not true. The
yarn explaining with a three-leaved clover the most holy and
undivided Trinity, one of Christian theology’s most profound mysteries,
is a bit too much even for the Irish who are famous for their tall
tales. The two books and famous prayer Patrick is said to have written
were penned by someone else and so it should come as no surprise
to know that the snakes he banished from Ireland were never there
in the first place, we Irish are a hot-blooded people and snakes
would have no business amongst us. Nevertheless, we do know
that the mighty man who may never have existed is buried at
Downpatrick Cathedral in Ireland’s lovely county Down and
that that cathedral in the course of history abandoned the Church
of Rome and went over to the reforming protesters.
Yet
Patrick is one of the world’s most popular saints and getting more
popular by the day all over the world not only with the Irish and
their descendants but also with the hosts of others who become Irish
for at least one day in the year, today, March 17, St. Patrick’s
Day. The 17th of March was chosen because some
say it was Patrick’s birthday, others say it was his death day,
others say it was both, and according to “The Birth of St.
Patrick,” by Samuel Lover, the 19th century Dublin-born
writer and painter, the 17th was chosen to stop a fight
between a group of boys who said Patrick was born on the 8th
and another group who said it was the 9th:
“Ah!
Says
Fr. Mulcahy,
Boys,
don’t be fighting for eight or for nine,
Combine
the two
and
seventeen is the time,
So,
let that be his birthday?
Amen!
said
the lads and
Then
they all got blind drunk,
Which
completed their bliss,
And
we keep up the practice
From
that day to this!”
No
matter why the 17th of March was chosen, it is the day
for the wearing of the green in your clothes, on your face, in your
hair, on your fingernails, in your ears, on your lips, and on anywhere
else your fancy takes you. It is also a day for the drinking
of the green as pubs and bars all over the world dye their beverages
and Paddy’s boisterous lads and lassies cannot get enough
of it.
The day will
start with parades and finish with parties everywhere and it is
only right, because St. Patrick’s Day began not in Ireland
but in Boston in 1737, that the biggest parade of them all will
be New York’s 242nd St. Patrick's Day Parade, up 5th Avenue
from 86th to 44th streets, to the music of bagpipes and high school
bands. Grand Marshall James G. O’Connor and a host of politicians
and presbyters will follow the 165th Infantry (originally the glorious
69th Regiment of the 1850's), the Ancient Order of Hibernians, 30
Irish county societies, clan by clan, Irish nationalist societies,
and nearly 150,000 others proudly wearing the green, as millions
gawk along the parade route or watch on TV a wonderful spectacle
of Irish pageantry. This year’s parade will stop at the
reviewing stand at 5th Avenue and 64th Street for New York's Edward
Cardinal Egan to pray for a peaceful solution to the conflict with
Iraq. Everyone who is anyone will be in that parade except, of course,
the Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization. The Mayor of New York, Michael
R. Bloomberg, will march too, although he has publicly voiced his
disapproval of the banning of the Irish homosexuals who are not
allowed to march “because their lives do not conform to Catholic
teaching.” Wow!
Over
in the White House, which was actually designed by an Irishman,
US President George W. Bush, one of America’s 18 presidents of Irish
descent, already drowned the shamrock a little early this year on
Thursday, March 13, at the US President’s annual party
for Ireland’s Taoiseach or Prime Minister, the only politician in
the world who is guaranteed a yearly meeting with the US President.
It may all sound like a bit of a joke but it is not. The Irish-American
lobby has tremendous political and corporate clout and with William
Jefferson Clinton it did more than anyone else to prepare the way
for peace in the six counties of Northern Ireland. This year
Taoiseach Bartholomew “Bertie” Ahern told George W. Bush that the
best way forward in the conflict in the Middle East is through the
United Nations, which was, Ahern insisted, set up precisely for
this kind of stand off.
Most
of Ahern’s cabinet also travels abroad for St. Patrick’s Day to
promote Ireland and although this year none of them will travel
to Argentina where some half a million Argentines claim Irish descent,
St. Patrick’s Day will be well and truly celebrated here.
Celebrations start at the metropolitan cathedral where the Irish
Argentine Federation will pay homage to General José de San Martin,
the Liberator, and then homage will be paid to Admiral William Brown
at his monument nearby. One of the Argentine Navy bands will be
present to play the Argentine and Irish national anthems, and St.
Patricks’s Day in the morning,’ one of their insignia tunes, which
the intrepid Brown is said to have ordered his drummers to play
every time he sailed into battle, although by all accounts the Mayo
man was more concerned with guns than drums on battle day.
After
all the honors are rendered and the music has died away it is open
season for the revelers. The wise go home, the more mature
and not so mature head to the American Club which has been putting
on a St. Patrick’s Day do for as far back as I can remember. The
craic, as the Irish call fun, really starts later on in the evening
around the many Irish pubs that have sprung up in the city and environs
over the last 30 years with Argentina’s only Irish-born publican,
Cork-born Jack Murphy, very much to the fore with his aptly named
Shamrock Pub where it is St. Patrick’s Day every day. It will be
next to impossible to get into any of these havens of modern holiness
as they fill to the brim with worshippers of the man who may never
have existed and who started it all so many years ago in the Ireland
he was abducted into as a slave, escaped from, and thence could
not sleep at nights from the noise the pagan Irish were making in
his head calling him back to save them from sin and Satan.
Patrick stood up to be counted and the rest, as the fella said,
is history. He was, after all, no matter how little we know
about him, “a gentleman who came from decent people.”
“Sláinte
agus saol agaibh, agus bas in Eireann,” or in English: “health and
life to you, and may you die in Ireland.”
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