St. Patrick's Day in Rexburg; or, "Oh my goodness! A post on this blog!"

This is a long post, just to tell you ahead of time.  It will likely always be like this, a long drought then a flood.  So here it goes:

Yesterday, in addition to St. Patrick’s Day, Kate and I celebrated our third anniversary.  The story behind that is that we were thinking of getting married around March, and those of our friends who didn’t think April Fools’ Day would be a hilarious day to get married were trying to persuade us to choose Valentine’s Day.  Since we both think Valentine’s Day is incredibly lame (and doesn’t have much to do with St. Valentine anymore), we settled very quickly on St. Patrick’s Day as a good choice.

This is especially significant because in the town where we met, Rolla, Missouri, St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal (see the picture of the mayor of Rolla giving "St. Pat" a key to the city).  A significant amount of money is made in winter on St. Patrick’s Day sweatshirts, etc., and on March 18^th of every year everyone at the university starts stockpiling alcohol for next year’s celebration.  Having been in that environment it’s kind of a depressing bit of culture shock to be in a place where it’s almost a forgotten holiday.  So here are my thoughts on what I did see of St. Patrick’s Day in Rexburg.  I’m saving what I liked for last (always end on a good note), so even though it’s a very mixed good, know that I’m not being totally critical.

First, if you’re going to do something public for another culture’s national holiday, you need to do your research.  While Kate and I were eating lunch in the Manwaring Center, a group of bagpipers and a drummer came in and performed.  The performance itself wasn’t terrible (though it wasn’t great either), there was a major problem with it.  The pipe band was dressed in full Scottish traditional outfits, kilts and all, playing Scottish tunes on Scottish highland bagpipes.  During the short time we were there, we heard “Scotland the Brave,” the unofficial anthem of Scotland, no less than three times.  This wouldn’t be a problem if St. Patrick’s Day were Scotland’s national holiday, not Ireland’s.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Scottish pipes, but considering that last year was the first time there was ever a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Scotland, it’s really not a big deal in Scotland.

On the other hand, there was a more official St. Patrick’s Day themed event that was actually very entertaining.  On Saturday night we went to go see Celtic Tales at the Snow Black Box Theatre.  We had no idea what to expect, but it fulfilled an FA100 event for me so we went.  It was a really mixed experience.  It dealt with Celtic culture in general, not just Irish, but was up-front about it.  Essentially, there were about half a dozen acts, most of which involved someone coming on-stage and telling a Celtic story.  (As a side-note, Celtic is always pronounced with a hard “c,” like a “k,” never like an “s.”)  The stories themselves, sadly, were not very good.  One was very well performed, but not terribly interesting.  There was one funny song, that I bet if it was in context would have been hilarious because we’d have gotten the joke, but instead was hilarious because it was bizarre and didn’t make any sense.

After the first, comedic half, it took a more serious turn, which was not a good choice.  Three girls came out and sang two Celtic tunes:  Danny Boy and Loch Lomond.  They didn’t share the story behind Danny Boy, so they either didn’t know there was one or didn’t want to share it, since the song is really supposed to be a father singing to his son as he sends him off to war.  Most people think it’s a simple love song, which is why so often you hear women singing it.  If you can, listen to Harry Connick Jr.’s rendition of the song, it is amazing.  They did share the story of Loch Lomond, which is a dying soldier asking another soldier to carry news of his death to his family in Scotland.  Since he was dying, he’d be taking the “low road,” while the messenger would take the “high road,” but his spirit would be in Scotland before the messenger would get there.  This act was a real missed opportunity, since there are so many lesser-known Celtic tunes with great stories, such as “Silent, O’Moyle,” one of my favorites.  Also, though the girls had good voices, they weren’t very confident; so the singing, and especially the guitar accompaniment, were very quiet.

Then they did a very short play, “Riders to the Sea.”  Even if the acting had been good, I still don’t think it would have been any good.  Though very authentically Irish, the play was very depressing.  Basically, a mother has had about six sons drown in the sea, and during the play her last son leaves and gets thrown from his horse into the sea and drowns.  So the point of the play is that she has no sons left.  That’s it.  For a tragedy to work, you need to like the characters first.  You don’t get that chance in this play; it starts right away with the crying and complaining.

The good note I promised:  The MC’s were hilarious!  They were three guys, one Welsh (if I recall correctly), one Irish and one Scottish.  Mostly they would argue whether Scots or Irish were better, and the third guy would play Scottish bagpipes as the three of them marched onto the set between each act.  The best part was when the tune on the pipes was none other than the theme to Star Wars.  They came up and did a quick summary of “A New Hope:”  “Luke Lad, I’m yer father!”  “No!  It cannae be true!”  Good stuff.  Also, when they kicked off the evening, they announced that it welcomed us to the set of this ancient Irish castle.  Only, the Rashomon set was still up.  So they faltered (deliberately), looked behind them and interpreted the sign to say “Guinness Sold Here.”  During each act, the audience was eagerly awaiting the MCs, who were the real show and made the whole thing very much worthwhile.

Even though St. Patrick’s Day is over, I recommend the movie Michael Collins for a bit of Irish history (1916-1922).  Perhaps in my next post I’ll review that, it’s an amazing movie.

Updated:  I added Harry Connick, Jr.'s version of Danny Boy to my playlist.  It should show up at the bottom.