The past week has provided more evidence that St. Patrick’s Day, the ‘national holiday,’ has become yet another metric by which to judge the progress of Tuireamh na hÉireann – the lament for Ireland.
In the poem of that name by Seán Ó Conaill, written in the 1650s, the lament concludes with the description of the ongoing Cromwellian Conquest as the final act which had finished us off for good. Not quite it seems.