PATRICK’S DAY.

I was awakened this morning at daylight by the cry under my windows, of “Green shamrock, fine shamrock;” and the cry has been repeated as incessantly and as annoyingly the whole day, as that of “hot cross buns” is in London on a Good Friday. The Irish, by the bye, with all their catholicism, do not eat cross buns; which is as exclusively a protestant, as it is a cockney fashion of idolatry.

The national festival in Ireland, with the supremacy of the saint, to whom it is dedicated, is still maintained with unabated devotion and conviviality throughout the kingdom, from the castle to the cabin. For a week before it arrives, the beggars wish you “many happy Patrick’s days;” Patrick’s crosses are sold in every street; every field in the vicinity of the metropolis is crowded with searchers after “green shamrocks;” and the dealers in this national emblem (most appropriate to a people accustomed to be trodden on) carry on a bustling and a thriving trade, till the whole population comes forth like “Birnham wood to Dunsinane’s high hill.” From the lowest mendicant to the lord lieutenant,⁠[92] all are supplied with shamrocks. Not only “bishops, priests, and deacons,” of the church, as by law established, decorate their consecrated persons with the venerable emblem of a catholic saint; but the law itself, and its great conservators, “prank it in green,” like the “merry men” of Sherwood forest. From the protestant keeper of the king’s conscience to the papistical attorney, who has no conscience to keep, all are adorned, though not distinguished by the shamrock.

As soon as the domestic day begins, and breakfast is announced, the head servant in every house makes his appearance with a salver of shamrocks, each tied up into a bouquet, presenting one to each of the family, and usually receiving a buona mano, “to drown his shamrock in St. Patrick’s pot.” The fumes of whiskey punch, the proper libation to the patron saint, arise from every kitchen and servants’ hall, throughout the country; and the court ball given at the Castle of Dublin, in that noble temple dedicated at once to the saint, and to Terpsichore, St. Patrick’s hall, surpasses in numbers and in splendour even the like celebration of the king’s birthday. Feathers wave, lappets flutter, diamonds sparkle; and the red bench still presents the descendants of the Geraldines, the De Burgos, and the Brien Borrus, with six hundred years’ nobility at their backs, upholding the patron saint of their ancient dynasties, in the very face of the protestant church, and of the constitution of 1688.

When all are seated, (and what an amphitheatre of beauty presents itself to the eye of the lucky stranger, who chances to visit the Irish court on a Patrick’s day,) and when the vice-regal procession has passed up the centre of the hall, and the representatives of majesty have taken their seats on the throne, once consecrated by the august person of majesty itself; then the national air is struck up with an enlivening influence, to which even Lord F——’s protestant heart might beat responsively. Chamberlains and masters of the ceremony, officiating as high priests on this most catholic festival, arrange the “office” to be celebrated, in honour of the merriest saint in the calendar; to whose glory, and to whose tune, the beautiful youths of his own Ireland dance, with a devotional ardour, far beyond the saltatory piety of the zealous jumpers of Wales, or of the dancing dervishes of Constantinople. None of the cold forms and still-life movements of the quadrille, invented by philosophers, “atheists and politicians,” neutralize its fervour. Fifty couples, danced down in dislocating springs and hops, attest the fanaticism of the devotees; and every joyous face and glittering eye, seems to say, with the disciples of a certain Italian saint, “plead for us, we dance with you.”

St. Patrick’s day is the saturnalia of all the elderly gentlemen, who have not “forgot themselves to stone.” Many veterans de la vieille roche, go through a course of champooing for the occasion, and anoint their joints, like the athletes of old, to attest their adherence to the creed of their fathers, and preach the doctrine of Paddy O’Rafferty, and of the Cameronian rant, in opposition to the heresy and schism of Di tanti palpiti, dos-à-dos, and “cavalier seul.” This, too, is the hegira of ladies of a certain age, who, taking flight from the fatal pre-eminence to which Time had consigned them, bring the weight of their personal consequence to the support of an oppressed faith; and yielding to the flattering proposition of some young aid-de-camp on service, (and very hard service too,) drag the “feathered mercury” after them, down the middle, and up again, to the interesting intonations of “go to the devil and shake yourself,” or, “Patrick’s day in the morning.”⁠[93]⁠

At last arrives the media noche of the well worshipped saint, who for once sees the religious acrimony and christian animosity of the country he vainly protects, laid at the feet of national gaiety and sociality. Supper is announced; and the feast of the cocagne in France, or Naples, was but a luncheon, to this truly catholic entertainment. Hands that never met before, meet now on the necks of flasks and decanters. Fingers habitually raised in mutual scorn, are now busy in the same pie; while protestant nods at papist, in a tolerant hob-nob from “humble port to imperial tokay.” Sir Harcourt takes wine with the author of “Florence Macarthy,” and Counsellor O’Connell is helped to the wing of a pheasant by a protestant archbishop, with a mental reservation against all other “wings,” in all other places.

Again, the dance is resumed; hearts, lost or mislaid, before supper, are detected on the person of the thief, after it. Partners, led out for a waltz, remain partners for life; and St. Patrick becomes the Hymen of the year, insuring the perpetuity of his rites, by the recollections which every recurrence of his joyous festival is sure to bring with it. Oh! that all the saints (St. Athanasius, the great protestant saint, included,) were thus worshipped! That all saints “militant here” in Ireland, maintained this spirit of social kindness, this interchange of social courtesy. To those who, like myself, have made the sacrifice, (the greatest that a true Irishman, and still more, a true Irishwoman can make,) that of living in the country, where patriotism has long been not only proscription, but martyrdom, what a change would such an order of things produce! what a perpetual recurrence of bitter sensations would it spare! what natural talent (now kept down by party spirit,) would explode, to illuminate the murky atmosphere of political disunion like the bursting of a sky-rocket on the midnight gloom of a winter’s night! Who, that loves Ireland, that loves humanity, would not drop a bead, or light a taper, to propitiate the saint, who would work this best and greatest of miracles? Be it hoped, that this Patrick’s day, 1829, will be the harbinger of an whole year of national festivals; and that he, who has represented the good saint on earth, by an act, which every Irish saint in the calendar will bless, will accept of this humble offering from one, who has proved herself no

and who, true to her old vocation, flung no tributary laurel under the chariot wheels of the conqueror at Waterloo, yet now gratefully lays her shamrock at the feet of the emancipator of Ireland.

THE END.