Tractors fly the green flag
LIOS Póil provided humour, Mara Beo aquarium displayed a dire warning about plastic pollution in the oceans, children waved their football club colours but the heavyweights of the St Patrick’s Day parade in Dingle were the tractors.
The theme of the parade was ‘Dingle past, present and future’ and this was taken up, in the agricultural sense, by small tractors from the past and very large tractors from the present. “And now we have what appears to be another tractor,” said Danno Keeffe as he provided a typically laconic running commentary on the parade from the reviewing stand on Holy Ground. There were no tractors to represent Dingle’s future but the obvious level of investment in heavy machinery might suggest that there’s still confidence in the industry.
Not all the big wheelers were agricultural – the local Coast Guard unit had a dizzying array of equipment on display but even they wouldn’t be able to keep up with the RIB (boat) Jimmy Flannery brought to the parade. It’ll be on the water doing marine tours shortly and looks like it could get to the Blaskets in 10 minutes flat.
The parade was led, as always, by the Dingle Fife & Drum band who were on their second outing after the town’s traditional dawn march, which had hundreds of early risers in tow, including the Healy Rae brothers Michael and Danny. Interspersed through the parade behind the Fife & Drum were more musical talents from Banna Ceoil Lios Póil and the Dingle Carnival Band, boosted this year by locally-based Sacred Heart University students who brought American exhuberance to the display.