St. Patrick's Day activities

Uilleann Pipes
41

I had no idea that was the logo of a Def Leppard cover band. I don’t listen to that music at all. Are they an American cover band? That changes the whole message of the flag from people being flagrantly Unionist/pro-Orange lodge/pro-UVF to just being eejits who should read up on some Irish history. **Many of them, in my experience, are often not familiar with the subtleties of UK or Irish politics. For example, I wish I had a pound for every American who referred to the entire UK as “England.” I’d be able to afford a set of regulators. Politicians and news reporters seem to be the worst offenders.

**In fairness I doubt I really picked up on these subtleties – at least not to the degree I am aware of it now – until I moved out here but I wasn’t making foreign policy decisions or reporting foreign policy decisions, either.

42

Nicely defused -

Phew!

:smiley:

43

Phew is right. I’d carefully composed a rather rambling essay on benign American ignorance and whether that was sometimes not as bad a thing as bitter torch-carrying or outright revisionism, but you can already see how illuminating that essay was … :laughing:

Yes, it was in a video taken in Louisville, Kentucky of a “band” doing a Def Leppard sendup for a St. Patrick’s Day parade float themed “Def Leprechaun.” So the flag "adaptation} was a mildly clever parody, but I SERIOUSLY doubt these guys were clever enough, let alone informed enough on Trouble History, to have gone any deeper with it than “Dudes! We’ll change the Def Leppard logo to Irish colors!” :horns all around:

44

Four-leafed “shamrocks” cause me to grind my molars. It is the epitomy of commercialisation. It is the sorry result of little research and the mongrelization legends by uninformed 1960s-era Madison Avenue types looking to distinguish otherwise bland products from their equally bland competition.

Green beer runs a very close second.

45

What’s interesting is that four-leaved shamrocks, as a symbol of Irishness, predate the 1960’s by a full century.

The football club Glasgow Celtic, formed in 1868, uses the four-leaved shamrock and the colours green and white to symbolise Irishness.

Likewise the basketball team Boston Celtic has long used the same symbol and colours.

Both Glasgow and Boston were areas of large Irish immigration in the mid-19th century, and those Irish immigrants chose the four-leaved shamrock as their symbol. I wonder why? Oh, and both teams pronounce it “selltick”.

What causes me to “grind my molars” on St Pat’s is seeing people spell it St Patty’s Day (just who is this Saint Patricia anyhow?)

Anyhow on St Pat’s I spent noon-3pm with a trio playing in a nice bar/restaurant. Nice and quiet with people actually listening. Then off to a relaxed gathering in a home, a gig which I’ve done now for over ten years. A number of Welsh people were present and I ended up playing Sou Gan and Ash Grove on the pipes.

46

Oh by the way, as someone who also plays Scottish Highland pipes, it was wonderful to spend an entire St Pat’s in trousers playing the uilleann pipes (and whistle).

I’ve spent some St Pat’s in kilts playing the Highland pipes all day long. One year it was seven gigs that day, all on Highland pipes.

I really dislike when that happens, and when I can I’ll stick in the uilleann pipes, saying something like “you many not know it, but the Irish have their own kind of bagpipe…” and play a few tunes on the UPs. People are nearly always interested in hearing the uilleann pipes.

47

Scottish Highland Bagpipes is a misnomer.Correctly,Piob Mhor pronounced, pib war, meaning Big Pipes is as much an Irish Instrument as the Union Pipes.The Piobs are not and never have been exclusive to Scotland.
Uilliam

48

What do you think of this scenario. There are plans afoot to have the area’s largest “Highland” pipe band/solo competition here
…at the local Irish Fair. About a month after the same sort of thing is featured at the local Scottish Highland Fair.

T

49

Frae the Irish Post

Coatbridge celebrations among the best in the world



BY MARY MCGINTY
COATBRIDGE’S St. Patrick’s Day Festival has muscled its way into the company of traditional St. Patrick’s Day heavyweights, highlighting the increasing success of the Irish community’s efforts in the Lanarkshire town.

Attending the festival in Coatbridge has been voted as the eighth best way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the world by online travel guide TripAdvisor, a remarkable achievement in only the festival’s eighth year.

The list featured some of the best known St. Patrick’s Day celebrations around the world, including the well established events in New York and Boston across the Atlantic.

Other locations to provide stiff competition to the Coatbridge celebrations were Dublin, Cork and London. The celebrations in Manchester were placed 10th.

Festival Chair Tom Nolan was delighted to see the Coatbridge festival receive this recognition.

He said: “This is a tremendous honour for the St. Patrick’s Day Festival, Coatbridge. The committee strive to provide an event which includes culture, tradition and history, which is open to all members of the community, but primarily, we aim to provide a fun event which culminates in the Family Street Festival, which last year attracted over 15,000 people over the course of the day.

“We have visitors from various parts of Scotland as well as England, Germany, Holland and of course Ireland. This recognition is all the more remarkable when you see a town the size of Coatbridge right up there beside large cities like Dublin, London and Boston.”

Janice Sullivan, Secretary of the St. Patrick’s Day Festival Committee, told The Irish Post: “We’re absolutely delighted to be eighth. We started from nothing, but look at where we have come in just eight years. Apart from a few adverse letters to local newspapers in the early years we have had a great reception and now we’re looking to go even further.”

This year’s festival featured a range of cultural, historical and musical events, and saw Pop Idol winner turned TV presenter Michelle McManus, who was educated in Coatbridge, return to her old stomping ground as guest of honour.

Des Phee, originally of Coatbridge, attends the festival in the town every year and told The Irish Post of the pride the Irish community has in its annual celebrations, saying: “Coatbridge has always been intrinsically embossed by the strength of the Irish immigrant. Linguists have even remarked on the uniqueness of the local Coatbridge dialect, informed by shared characteristics of Irish speech distinct from its near neighbours of more familiar native Scottish stock.

“Coatbridge has taken in Irish immigrants and in turn returned icons like Margaret Skinnider, the revolutionary and feminist born and raised in the town and the only injured woman combatant in the Easter Rising, and also Irish political figures like Dr Charles O’Neill and Eddie McAteer.”

Mr Phee added: “The growth of the St. Patrick’s Day Festival in Coatbridge has been a source of pride for the townspeople, representing the biggest annual celebration of Irish culture and heritage in Scotland.

Moreover as first-generation immigrants pass on, it has served to galvanise the identity of the Irish Scots for younger generations and acts as an important yearly totem for the celebration of that identity in a way that is fiercely inclusive both of the town’s Scottish tradition, and of the other religious and ethnic identities in the town.

“O’Connell Street or 42nd Street it may not be, but for thousands of Emerald Exiles, Main Street is the only place to be!”

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/coatbridge/coatbridge/index.html

50

I went over to Belfast and played in a St. Patrick’s day parade with MacUmba (samaba drums and pipes) then got a lift on the bus to do the same in Portpatrick, supposedly where some of his bones are buried. Saw a band of boru pipers but they headed off pretty quick after the parade so i didn’t get a chance to talk to them, so wanted a shot of those pipes.

D

51

hello everyone,

I wanted to make my contribution to the St. Paddy’s day antics before it became to late.

Last week for St. Paddy’s day I was fortunate enough to play a few tunes with a local Bakersfield Irish/Celtic band named “Banshee in the Kitchen”. The band is made up of three very talented ladies, friends of mine and who I play with regularly at our local session on Wednesday nights. Banshee, who was headlining a special concert that night held at a local venue, asked a few local people to play a few songs with them (myself inculded). A few people took pictures.

I did a solo on the pipes to start the concert (I played and sang an aire- “Mountains of Mourne” into a reel- “the Old Bush”).

BTW, I love this last photo! I have entitled it “Playing in the Shadow of the Great Pipers”

Lastly, I played two jigs on the pipes (Kesh/Lark in the Morning) accompanied by the Banshee’s guitarist, Mary Tulin, and then played along with the full band on low whistle in a jazzy version of “The Butterfly Jig”.

After the concert, a couple of the ladies said they really liked the pipes, and asked if I would play with them again at another upcoming local concert.
Overall, it was an incredible experience to get to play with these talented and hospitable ladies. I will not soon forget it.

all the best,