Ah, Ireland. Beckett, Wilde, Joyce, Yeats and Riverdance

LOCK up your snakes! Yep, St Patrick’s Day is nearly upon us, celebrated in many partsoftheworldwith gusto and good craic. New York, of course, is most famous for having it large in this regard, attracting 150,000 marchers to itsparadeledbythe69th Infantry Regiment along a 1.5-mile route in Manhattan.

Back here in Scotia Minor, meanwhile, pubs and clubs up and arguably down the land lay is Guinness, produced by a company that historically opposed Ireland’s independence.

Odder still than that is the fact that St Patrick was born in Roman Britain, either in Wales or Caledonia according to various sources, and that before he became St Patrick his name was Maewyn Succat, which is not a name to sniff at.

As a teenage boy Maewyn was taken to Ireland for a slave but escaped, became a bishop (after successfully answering a series of competency-based questions in a job interview), and returned to the Emerald Isle to smite, metaphorically speaking, the druids and get the lieges to poohpooh paganism.

As for the snakes, these also appear to have been metaphorical, and were probably a reference to the satanic serpents of heathenry. So much for the religious baloney. More people nowadays are likely to celebrate the richness of a culture that gave us Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Yeats, Heaney, and Riverdance.

A couple of events, from a plethora, to highlight: Glasgow St Patrick’s Festival is laying on music, song and dance under an enclosed roof (in the unlikely event of rain in the dear, green place) at Merchant Square on Saturday. In Edinburgh, also on Saturday, the annual St Patrick’s Day Charity Ball takes place at the Sheraton Grand Hotel (and Spa, it says here: will they be getting steaming in the steam room?). Bit pricey and black tie, but money is raised for the homeless through a raffle and auction.

St Patrick’s Day is March 17, falling on a Friday this year, but many events take place on Saturday – nae work, hooray! – and continue through the weekend or, in some cases, forever.