Imagine learning about Australian Culture by attending some Australia Day activities. Ug? Lots of beer and frivolity? St Patrick’s Day has got to be the quintessential Irish Day. My first sight of the fervor was walking past the Euro store (cheap shop) that has rows of people lined up buying green and yellow Viking hats & Irish flags. Young and old were gleeful wrapping themselves in allsorts of green gailery. As I continued closer to Galway’s Eyre Square tall adolescents painted green were selling giant hammers ‘I’ve been hammered by the Irish’ and shamrock face tattoo’s. Lacking in hysteria it was quite pleasant to see the national pride. I loved the prolifiency of young families and Dads with their green painted kids on their shoulders. Grandmas’ had their video cameras and clover parcels pinned to their chests… Considering the cars piling into the large cathedral that held up traffic on my drive from Lisdoonvarna I image there had been to Catholic mass this morning. It is about a saint after all….
St Patrick, as my nearly 13-year-old goddaughter explained, was a British boy born into slavery and shipped to Ireland. He returned to spread Catholicism and drive out the snakes.
Later in the day I stayed to witness the clogging of every pub in Galway. People spilling out onto the street, excitedly declaring how drunk they were. It appeared to be busloads of teenagers congregating in the square.
I met a moralistic Irish grandma who tch tched at the travellors section of the parade, a drunken Irish lad with brown liquid in his clear water bottle and watched a row of twins in matching green clothing.
The parade was a whopping 3 hours of every school playing tin whistles and every modern evangelical church with car doof doofing. It was a wonderful cross section of this vibrant, confident culture. Much yet still to be understood.
I finished the day watching the sun go down on Galway bay and seeing a hurling match (Aerial hockey game) on the waterfront bar big screen TV.
‘And if there’s going to be a life hereafter, And Faith, somehow I’m sure there’s going to be, I will ask my God to let me make my heaven, In that dear land across the Irish Sea’
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