The Mad Irish, Saint Patricks Day and an Englishmans Little Finger

I was away in Donegal for St Patricks Weekend. I spent my St Patricks Day watching a live Gaelic football match in what used to be the Gaeltacht. I don't often go to football matches of any type but I thought it was great the way we could drive onto the grounds and watch the match from our car. This has led to the use of the car horn which I thought was a brilliant advance to cheer on the teams!

Another step forward would be a scoreboard to let us know who was winning. Either that or linesmen who raise their arms when someone scores a point! We left the match not knowing who won. We had thought that our local team had lost but it turned out afterwards that they had won by six points.

While most people in this 'Gaeltacht' now speak English I was quite chuffed and also embarrassed to hear two neighbouring spectators talking to each other and sharing a joke in Irish. I have heard other people tell of the same experience: Hearing someone express emotion through Irish, whether it be happiness or anger, makes the language seem more real to those of us who learned enough of it from a textbook in a classroom to pass an exam. It is good to hear Irish being used for simple everyday communication between people. This is more likely to be heard nowadays in the Gaeltacht but increasingly less so.

I've never liked St Patricks Day in Dublin very much. Internationally the Irish have a reputation for being great party people and great drinkers. I think that too many people try to live up to this reputation, resulting in drunkenness and unruly behaviour. Contrary to our reputation as heavy drinkers, Ireland was near the bottom of the league in Europe for consumption of alcohol up until the 1990s. This was due to the large amount of total abstainers who balanced out the heavy drinkers and also the simple lack of money that was experienced by most people. Since then our consumption of alcohol and also illegal drugs has increased and we are now close to the top.

Too many people are trying to be the 'mad Irish' with enough money to buy the alcohol but not able to handle the consequences.

When I returned to Dublin on Monday night I thought it was a pretty quiet St Patricks Day night. I walked from Busaras to O'Connell St to catch my bus home and, while there were plenty of rambling drunks, there were far less than I expected. Also I didn't sense any kind of menacing atmosphere as I walked along Talbot St. No doubt this was due to what must have been an impressive Garda turnout that day. Apart from a couple approaching from the opposite direction there was nothing remarkable at all. The man, with an English accent, was asking passers-by to kick his girlfriend. She, also English, thought this was a great idea.

As I walked along Talbot St towards O'Connell St it was approaching 10pm and the Gardai walking towards me in pairs were heading back to Store St to finish their shifts. In a way you have to wonder what kind of city it is that the police are only willing to walk the streets in pairs but I suppose it's nice to have someone to talk to.

Standing at the bus stop on O'Connell St I looked around and saw only minor trouble. There were plenty of drunks wandering around. I only saw a little splatter of blood on the footpath. While I stood waiting for my bus a(n Indian) security guard from the McDonalds beside my stop ran across the street to help the (African) security guard at the Burgerking across the road who was having trouble with the (Irish) drunk who was shouting at him asking him why he didn't go back to his own bleedin' country. In the end the drunk, being outnumbered, gracefully offered to shake hands with the security guard.

The quietness of the night was confirmed by the amount of vacant taxis driving past. After getting on the bus I eavesdropped on the phone conversation of a bar worker who had been let go home early because it was quiet. In fact it was so quiet that he had first had a break and then been let go home.

It was only when reading the paper the next day that I heard about the riots in Finglas and it appeared that there was more to the St Patricks Day disruptions than usual. Finglas seems to have experienced the worst St Patricks Day violence with incidents of car-jacking, joy-riding and car-burning, as well as other non-car-related vandalism. Arrests have been made, mostly teenagers. Isn’t it grand?

I also read today in the Evening Herald about Guy Wallace, a 17-year-old Englishman, who was attacked on O’Connell St by five people after he was asked where he was from. He was allegedly then beaten and had his hand forced against the footpath which ripped the little finger off his hand. The finger hasn't been recovered and Guy a piano and rugby player is learning to cope without it.

That's the version according to the Evening Herald anyway. Other news sources, including RTE, are more restrained, saying that Guys story is one possible theory being pursued by the police. Another is that it happened accidentally as Guy ran down the street while running away from an incident in a take away. Apparently he was so drunk that he can't really remember what happened.

Following the murders of the two Polish men in Drimnagh the media are looking out for stories of race-related attacks by Irish teenagers, who are apparently much more racist than their elders - ;) - and the story of Guy Wallace appears to fit in. However contradicting this his father, a Conservative councillor on Somerset County Council, said that this type of thing can happen anywhere in the world. No Irish exceptionalism here.