St. Patrick’s Day. 17 March. You’ve all heard of it. Many of you will have celebrated it in some way, maybe by watching a parade or taking part in one. It was last Thursday and as happens every year in Ireland, most cities, towns and some villages too marked Ireland’s national day by having a parade through their streets. Our own town of Oldcastle did its bit too with a variety of floats taking part, some promoting local businesses and community groups, others having a sly dig at certain political personages who are no longer to be found in Leinster House….. Dublin of course has the biggest parade in Ireland as befits the capital city. Indeed, in Dublin its no longer St. Patrick’s Day but rather St. Patrick’s Festival.
But did you ever stop to think when all this parading and excess of green began? 17 March did not become a public holiday in Ireland until 1903. There are various reports as to when the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in Ireland took place. The Baltimore Sun reported in 1927 that the Free State Army had paraded in Dublin “before vast crowds”. In 1934, the Ottawa Citizen reported that the new volunteer army paraded and in some parts of Dublin there were also parades by the Blueshirts. So it seems that the early Irish parades were a very formal, militaristic affair. Rather different from the all-singing, all-dancing parades we are used to today!
There are claims that the first St. Patrick’s Day parade ever was in Boston in 1737 and was organised by the Charitable Irish Society who were in a Boston tavern and decided to mark the day by walking en masse through the streets and inviting people to join them. Fact or fiction? Myth or history? We’ll probably never know for sure.
This year a number of iconic buildings and structures around the world went green to mark St. Patrick’s Day: London Eye and Battersea Power Station, the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House and closer to home, the Spire of Loyd near Kells was also illuminated to mark the day.
