Be careful what you wish for

There are, of course, fewer Welsh than Irish. The latter, for a variety of reasons, won the fecundity derby long ago. They also won the emigration derby hands down 150 years ago. Well, well, beware success and assimilation.

It's been a mere five years since St. Patrick's Day fell on a weekend. You'd think it had been 50. What remains a solemn religious holiday in Ireland, what is a day of thoughtfulness and reflection (as well as jollification) among the better-informed Irish-Americans, has morphed. It is now an occasion of thoughtless, amateur drunkenness, chiefly celebrated by people in green plastic hats, with plastic shillelaghs, without a drop of Irish blood among 100 of them. They drink themselves shit-faced on American light beer with green food colouring, eat a dish of corned beef and cabbage, and think they're Irish for a day. They don't know who Saint Patrick was*. Hell, if it wasn't for the financial meltdown, they wouldn't know what Ireland is and they don't know how to find Ireland on a map. The Aer Lingus gate is all they need.

Bullshit.

Better by far to be Welsh, to have a country no American ever heard of, and a holiday known only within the British Isles. Obscurity belongs only to itself: celebrity is owned by the world.

*St. Patrick was born in Wales. Heh.