Every nation has a national day, but not many celebrate it with a grand parade on the streets of New York. We don’t see the Scots celebrating Saint Andrew the golfer or the Welsh parading in honor of my namesake, Saint David. Even the English have a national day, Saint George’s Day, April 23, but are too modest to tell anybody about it. Those dates are not in the calendar, and you won’t find them in the greeting card shop. St. Patrick’s Day is virtually unique. Even if we have the misfortune not to be Irish, we can’t ignore it, and we are not allowed to forget it. Ireland is special.
My personal memories of the Emerald Isle are more than fifty years out of date, but old memories are always the best. As a young man, I set out one summer on an ambitious two-week motorcycle tour of the whole of Ireland one summer Unfortunately, relentless rain and rugged country roads were too much for my ancient machine, which had to be abandoned for repairs in a village near Cork. A man in the village rented me not a car but a horse, which he swore was thoroughly accustomed to taking people on tours of the local beauty
spots, so that I could continue my journey. I was very naïve at that age. The horse carried me at a walking pace along a well-worn trail through picturesque hills and valleys and then right back to her stable, to the great relief of us both. It was very much an Irish experience – gentle, slightly surreal, and very wet. But the very fact that we moved so slowly gave me a deeper impression of the landscape. You don’t see much from a motorcycle.
I have nothing but good memories of the hospitality and friendliness I met with on that trip, the romantic scenery, and the sense of an ancient culture, still whole and complete. Even the horse was charming.
When I recovered from my motorcycle tour, I did all the right tourist things. I even kissed Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle, as have many celebrities, including Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, and I have a picture to prove it. But it was that plodding, sodden horseback ride in County Cork that stayed in my mind. It’s no accident that so many of the world’s greatest writers, poets and artists have come out of Ireland. The country is a work of art in itself.
The importance of St. Patrick’s Day in the American consciousness may be explained by the sheer number of people here with Irish ancestry. In the great century of immigration from 1820 to 1920, about four and a half million Irish people came here. Almost exactly the same number of immigrants came from Italy, and the same from England, and more than ten million from the German and Austrian
Empires. The biggest ethnic celebration in America should logically have a German rather than an Irish accent.
But Saint Patrick’s Day is the big one. We can all be Irish on Saint Patrick’s Day, even me, although I don’t expect to fool anybody. America is a kaleidoscope of Nations, not unlike the old Roman Empire - e pluribus unum, you might say, if you had my talent for languages. But celebrating them all as each national day comes around would really be too much to ask. Let’s sink our national differences and just be Irish all year round.
