St. Patrick’s Day

18 03, 2024

Wearing of the Green

By |2024-03-16T12:20:37-05:00March 18th, 2024|Writer's Life|0 Comments

On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish for a day. I count myself Irish for the other 364 days too.

My Irish heritage can be traced through both my mother and father’s parents. Mama Callahan Smith, my daddy’s grandmother, and my mother’s mother Oma Johnson Ulit. Both families’ heritage can be traced to the Emerald Isle.

I still remember the first time I felt my Irish genes. I’d tagged along on my husband’s business trip not thinking about the family stories of Irish heritage.

When I looked out the airplane’s window as we descended for landing, my blood truly began to tingle, and my heart sang at the site of the green fields below. I dipped my hand in the River Shannon and knew I’d found home.

After ten trips, those roots solidified and my love of all things Irish grew deep.

It’s why you’re likely to find characters with an Irish background in my books. There’s even an entire book set in Ireland, Claiming Annie’s Heart.

Something else happened when I went to Ireland – a very native-sounding brogue surfaced. It filtered into my writing so much that my copy editors must correct syntax when proofing my books for publication.

I wore my green yesterday and celebrated Ireland’s patron saint, Patrick, who, as you may know, wasn’t even Irish but English. Still, he’s credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland … and if you believe the Irish folklore, chased all the snakes away.

I hope your St. Patrick’s Day included a wee bit of green too. After all, 38,597,428 people claimed they were Irish alone or in any combination during the 2020 Census. That’s 16.4% of the overall population.

Happy Day After St. Patrick’s Day!

14 03, 2022

Nothing like Irish music to Put Ya in a St. Patrick’s Day Mood

By |2022-03-11T05:55:46-06:00March 14th, 2022|A Writer's Life, Holidays, Make Me Think Monday, Writer's Life|0 Comments

St. Patrick’s Day brings all things Irish out around my house, even more so than usual. We feast on Irish stew and soda bread and start our day with scones. The air rings with Irish music.

But traditional Irish music isn’t limited to St. Paddy Day. You’ll often see a bit of toe-tapping going on around here. I could listen all day. And often do.

Music is the heart of Ireland. Whether the fiddler on a corner in Dublin or the man on the country lane blowing his Irish whistle or a late-night session at the local pub, you’ll find toe-tapping, hand-clapping music everywhere. Our visits to the pub sessions were the highlight of all our trips to Ireland.

 

 

 

 

 

One night, as a session broke up a native Irish speaker leaned over to me and said, “Ah, I tell ya, it was great music, ‘twould make the water stand out in ya eyes.”And indeed, tears did sparkle in my eyes that night. Nothing is more wonderful than the combination of traditional music and dancing.

Every visit to Ireland should include an Irish evening of traditional music, song, and local dancers. We still talk about our long-ago visit to Bunratty Castle’s Irish Evening at the Corn Barn.

Here’s a commercial video describing the event. I promise it will put you in St. Patrick’s Day mood.

13 03, 2017

How to sound Irish on St. Paddy’s Day

By |2017-03-13T20:24:04-05:00March 13th, 2017|Make Me Think Monday|2 Comments

****Please note the correction to the blog title. I have been duly notified that I’ve made St. Paddy into a burger. A very special thank you to Donal Walsh for sending me the tweet. I’ll not be making that mistake again. :)

To learn more about the Its Paddy not Patty Irish clamp down, click here. ****

Now back to the original blog…

Everyone claims to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s tradition.

Whether you have an ancestorial blood claim or you’re pretending, here are some Irish sayings you might use to impress friends and family.

Should you be challenged, there’s a brief explanation of the origins to help you out.

What’s the craic? Any craic? or How’s the craic?

It’s basically a greeting like we say in the states “How are you?” Sadly, since the spoken word sounds like “crack,” using the phrases can lead to misunderstanding. Be careful!

A typical Irish response would be “divil a bit,” which means “not much.”

Story horse?

A shortened version of “What’s the story, horse?” It’s how you ask someone what’s up. In response, an Irishman is likely to dive deeply into what’s been going on in life with a witty, long-winded tale.

Acting the maggot.

If someone is acting like a fool – messing around, being obnoxious, paying more attention to their phone than you – compare them to the wriggly white worm and they’ll get the message.

Look at the state o’you!

Heard around inner Dublin, it means you question a person’s attire, personal hygiene, intoxication level, or general demeanor. If it’s a drinking companion who is overly inebriated, he’s said to be in a “bleedin’ state” or “wrecked.”

I’m on me tod.

Means you’re on your own, alone at the bar or party, or in general.

The phrase comes from the story of Tod Sloan, an American jockey whose mother died when he was young and his father abandoned him. Tod moved to the U.K. and was ridiculed for his Western riding style which ultimately ended his incredibly successful horse-racing career. After that, Sloan was always said to be “on his own.”

It’s an example of Cockney rhyming slang. The phrase construction involves taking a common word and using a rhyming phrase of two or three words to replace it. “On my Tod Sloan” rhymes with “on my own”; but in Cockney fashion, the word that completes the rhyme (“Sloan”) is omitted.

And lastly, my favorite…

Sláinte!

An Irish toast to use as you clink your glasses of Guinness. Sláinte (pronounced “slaan-sha”) literally translates as “health” and is a shortened version of “I drink to your health!”

21 03, 2016

Celebrating Saint Patrick

By |2016-03-06T10:50:52-06:00March 21st, 2016|Holidays, Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

Last Thursday, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at my house. Our plates of corn beef and cabbage sat on woven place mats with shamrocks and Irish harps. A pot of shamrocks was our centerpiece. Not real shamrocks, but gloxinia, which has the clover-shaped leaves and little white flowers.

The corn beef and cabbage are totally an American-Irish tradition for St. Patrick’s Day. You’ll not find it served in Ireland.

While we ate, we talked of my recent trip to Ireland and all the St. Patrick legends I heard as we visited cathedrals and castles. Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and March 17 is, in fact, a religious feast day.

For those who didn’t know, St. Patrick himself was British, born in Roman Britain in the fourth century. In his teens, Irish raiders kidnapped him. He worked as a shepherd and “found God,” who called him to evangelize Ireland. Later he became a priest and spent years converting the Irish pagans. He died on 17 March.  Over the following centuries, many legends grew up around Patrick and he became Ireland’s foremost saint.

St.Pat pixTechnically, St. Patrick was never canonized by a pope as saints of the modern day church are. There wasn’t a formal canonization process in the Church’s first millennium, so most saints from that period were granted the title if they were either martyrs or seen as extraordinarily holy. But Saint Patrick is revered as holy by the Irish. Pictures like this one can be found everywhere on the island.

gohistoric_17909_mOne of the stops on my trip along the west of Ireland was at The Rock of Cashel, seat of the overkings of Munster where St. Patrick baptized the grandsons of Conall Corc. The legend says during the baptism the saint’s sharply pointed crozier pierced the son’s foot, who, believing it a part of the ceremony, suffered in silence. Since the baptism occurred in the 10th century, who knows if the story is fact or fiction.

On the same trip, I went to Croagh Patrick, the mountain which overlooks Clew Bay in County Mayo. It is known as the holiest mountain in Ireland because St. Patrick fasted for forty days on the mountain summit in 441 AD. Now individuals and groups come from all over the world to climb to the summit and celebrate mass at the modern chapel at the top.

The first stop on the pilgrimage is Saint Patrick’s statue erected in 1928 by Reverend Father Patterson with money he collected in America towards the rebuilding of Saint Mary’s Church in Westport. Because it was late in the day and raining – not raining raining but what the Irish call spitting, we only hiked as far as the statue. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

We also made stops at Saint Patrick’shamrocks Cathedral in Dublin where legend says St. Patrick baptized converts at a well that once existed in the park alongside the church.

The most common St Patrick’s Day symbol is the shamrock, a representation of the Holy Trinity. St. Patrick is said to have used the three-leaved shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to Irish pagans.

While parades, dancing, special foods, and a whole lot of green are fun ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and our Irish heritage, it’s also good to pause and remember who Saint Patrick was.

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