Check your calendar or check your head. If you didn’t know that today is St. Patrick’s Day then you really need the luck of the Irish with you.
First things first. It’s important to use the proper phrasing and spelling and get the name straight.
“Here, they all seem to say ‘Happy St. Patty’s Day’. It is not St. Patty’s Day,” confirmed Ann Brady, proprietor of St. Albert’s Toast Breakfast and Lunch and native lass of County Cavan, near the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. “It is either St. Patrick’s Day or Paddy’s Day.”
Today marks the celebration of the fifth-century bishop who became the patron saint of Ireland. According to legend, he was a teenager when Irish pirates captured and enslaved him, taking him to the Emerald Isle where he remained for several years. Then he escaped, returning to his family before he dedicated his life to Christ. In his clerical years, he returned to Ireland and was considered responsible for founding Christianity after converting the Irish pagans. The children’s story of him banishing the snakes from Ireland was an allegory about his dealings with the so-called heathens.
March 17 is generally considered to be the date of his death. Perhaps that’s as good as any day to celebrate Éirinn go Brách, the Irish phrase meaning “Ireland forever.” It’s so close to the official start of spring that it gives everyone a good excuse to wear springy green clothes and participate in a little mirth-making.
Some bona fide Irish men and women were consulted about which traditions have carried over from the homeland and which ones might have gotten lost in translation. It’s all about friends and family coming together but the manner and venue of doing so varies depending on who you ask.
“St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland was a day where we would get dressed up to the best and go to church, come home and have some good food. It was more of a holy day back there,” explained County Carlow’s Martin Doyle, president of the Irish Sports and Social Club, known casually as the Irish Club. “Now, it’s becoming more like North America. North America took it to a different extreme. They really made it a real day of celebration.”
The cultural club has a full day of activities planned and they’re opening early to get a good start to it too. There’s a full traditional Irish breakfast with bacon and eggs, sausage, black pudding, white pudding and homemade Irish soda bread that people can eat as they watch the Gaelic games via satellite on the television. There’s Gaelic football and the traditional Irish game of hurling. Doyle describes it as kind of like lacrosse only that there are 15 players on each side and they use a flat stick with a bas on the end. “It’s one of the fastest games on grass.”
Ireland also has a Grand Slam rugby match against England later that should prove entertaining.
If you’re more interested in live entertainment, they’ve got you covered there too with Mark McGarrigle, Martin Doyle (Doyle’s nephew) and Dave Devaney, and Vibram Souls will play out the end of the day. They’ll also have music off the stage periodically with pipers and a series of performances from local dance schools that’ll be just grand.
“There’ s dancing … then we have more Irish dancing … then there’s more Irish dancing … then we have more Irish dancing,” Doyle said.
Back at Toast, Brady will have her own version of the traditional breakfast going, though she balks at calling it traditional for this day.
“There’s no meal as such. In New York, they say corned beef and cabbage. Here, it’s bacon and cabbage. We are serving bacon and cabbage but it is not a traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal in Ireland."
Her bacon and cabbage gets served with mashed potato and parsley sauce, probably just to make sure that the plate has a little bit of green on it. It’s an Irish staple but not necessarily saved for special occasions such as this one. The Irish here love it, she said. Last year, they did Irish stew, which was a huge hit.
Brady and Doyle both agree that they do love their lives here in Canada, but there are some things that they miss, like the parades in many of the towns or how they dye the River Liffey green. Everybody wears green but nobody dyes their beer green. Besides, that wouldn’t work on a pint of black Guinness.
“You know what? St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland is all about the beer. It’s a pub day. Really, it is all about the pubs. We were in the pub business for years in Ireland. It is a huge day for the pubs and the parades … man, woman and child. It doesn’t matter who or what you are. Everybody drinks on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s sad to say, really, but that’s the way it is.”
After she closes up for the day, she and her husband Tommy will head to the Irish Club to watch those dancers. “They’re amazing. It’s a great night full of Irish people,” she said, noting that the place is packed that day.
Kara Little, one of the lead singers from Vibram Soul, agreed. Last year, the band played the club the day after Paddy’s Day and it was just as packed as it was on the day.
“The 18th was still crazy and having St. Patrick’s Day on a Saturday is like having New Year’s Eve on a Saturday!”
“Everybody’ll come there. It don’t matter what nationality you are or where you come from, they’re all welcome. They’ll all be Irish on that day,” Doyle said.
If you’re not there then you’re probably keen to take in the Guinness specials at more local watering holes like the Crown and Tower or O’Máille’s or the Celtic Knot Pub, all opening early and each with their own food offerings and entertainment lined up.
The Celtic Knot has the Brady Academy of Irish Dance and the Scoil Rince Mahoney School of Irish Dance lined up to entertain the revellers, and the Rural Routes is the featured band of the evening.
That’s the public house where you’ll find son of Dublin Brian Gallagher behind the bar serving the thirsty crowd. He was a bartender even before he moved here so he has a good perspective on the comparisons and contrasts between how the day is celebrated in both countries.
“It’s actually more busy in Canada on St. Patrick’s Day than it is in the pubs in Ireland,” he said, remembering his youth when everyone would get shamrocks and little badges of harps.
“Every town and city in Ireland has a parade. You take the kids in to see the parade and because Ireland is quite religious – St. Patrick’s Day is during Lent so the kids’d be off chocolate for Lent – that’d be the one day your parents’d let you break Lent for the day. There’s lots of sport on that day. You’ve got all Ireland football and hurling in Croke Park. There’s rugby on. Here, it’s more about partying in the pubs, havin’ a good time.”
