The Irish, as a people, have a bit of a history of hard knocks: famines, storms, constant cloud cover, and a long list of problems related to the English. Despite this (or perhaps as a reaction to it) one of the principal concepts connected with St. Patrick’s Day is luck.
For your enjoyment, here is a sampling of things the Irish will do to bring on good fortune:
- Catching a falling leaf in autumn. I’ve tried this, and it’s both harder and more fun than you might think.
- Saluting a magpie. Failure to do so will bring bad luck.
- “Drowning the shamrock.” Dunk a clover into your last drink of the night and toss it over your shoulder. Good luck ensues.
- Touching wood. As with most age-old traditions, the exact origin of the whole “touch wood” thing is a bit murky, but several sources claim that it started in Ireland.
- Whistling indoors. This is a bit of a strange one. Do it while cooking or cleaning and you’ll attract good luck, but do it at night and you might attract evil spirits. Not sure what the advice is if you’re cooking or cleaning at night.
- Turning a kid upside down on their birthday. No joke; hold them by their ankles and then bonk their head on the floor once for each year of their age. Plus one for good luck. I’m starting to think that annual concussions might explain some of the other odd behaviour on this list.
Whether you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by whistling, dunking foliage into alcohol, or saluting at birds, take a moment to enjoy this beautiful, quiet song by Ireland’s very own Rafino Murphy, aka Uly.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Everything is so quiet. He sings barely above a whisper, the guitar is finger-picked…even the trumpet solo somehow manages to be quiet.
2. In the second verse, he overdubs himself singing an octave lower, which is an interesting and subtle take on backup vocals.
3. It might just be my own interpretation, but the lyrics seem to send a message of anti-luck. “Fighting with the birds / The wings they leave behind” – magpie wings? Wings kept for good luck? – but then he goes on: “They won’t help you fly / Cause they’re not yours.”
Maybe that’s the key to Irish resilience. You can whistle till your lips are dry and salute all the magpies you like, but in the end, you have to make your own luck.
Recommended listening activity:
Inventing a superstition and living by it all week, just to see what happens.