We are being called upon to celebrate St Patrick's Day on the weekend starting May 18th but, thanks to the minister in charge of such matters, Mary Harney, we are not getting an extra, even one-off, bank holiday. So what will happen?
In Dublin, the festivities kick off on Friday night when 2,000 students with lanterns converge from the four corners of the city, behind 100 drummers and pipers, on the Liffey quays for a son et lumiere. This new event, which like the others was planned for March 17th, is called "Meet me at the River". Over the weekend, there will be the usual parade, from St Patrick's Cathedral to O'Connell Street, with Irish as opposed to American High School bands. The area around Temple Bar will become a kind of mardi gras location and there will be fireworks in the sky. What's more, the weather should be better than the normal St Patrick's Day.
Quidnunc's sources say there was great debate among Celtic and ecclesiastical scholars during the 1940s about there being two St Patricks. The second, and uncelebrated, was apparently called Paladius and he did a lot of the preliminary converting before Patrick as we know him arrived. A movement to have his day in mid-May might be no bad thing.
