I have thought for some time about just how I would acknowledge St Patrick's Day in my Holiday section. I am well aware that the popular perception is one of levity, and a general consensus that it is wonderful to be Irish, or have a background or family tree which leads back to Ireland, particularly on this one day of the year when everyone heralds the wearing of the green.

The myth may say St. Patrick chased the 'snakes' out of Ireland, but the deadly venom lived there still for so many years that it is only in recent days there is peace.There is finally a genuine effort on the part of a great many sincere and honest people, who on both sides love their homeland, to finally bring harmony to their beautiful land.

Through the years there have been many imprisonments in British jails, some clearly justified, some just as patently not.There are voices on both sides of the Northern Ireland situation who say the issue isn't any more "who did what to whom, and when." It is only "what can we do now to make everyone's situation better." We have seen striking evidence in the past decade that people who historically have hated and mistrusted one another can try to make arrangements for their mutual benefit, even over the possible obstructionism of frenzied nationalists. In the short term, such pragmatism may reduce the violence. In the longer term, it may reduce hatred. For the first time, at long last, Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans have  pledged to share power.

Forgive my cynicism and scepticism that this pledge will survive, when I remember that this mess started in 1171, and when I take into account the manner in which the Queen formally gave her long overdue seal of approval to a law ending 27 years of Britain's rancorous direct rule of Northern Ireland. She used no more than one word at the brief ceremony at Buckingham Palace. The Queen said, "Approved." Hardly encouraging as an indication of  heartfelt goodwill and sincerity from the sovereign of the British Isles. 

She is our Queen as well, and upon hearing of her so obviously grudgingly given approval I thanked God she does not hold that degree of power in my country ! How any mother and grandmother could not be more demonstratively elated at such progress and what hope it might bring to the unborn children of Northern Ireland I shall never understand. 

I 'celebrate' St. Patrick's Day with a prayer that the 'bridge of hope', so earnestly and eloquently requested by the child poet whom I have cited above, and whose innocent young life was so brutally taken by the Omagh bomb, is truly built on solid rock.

I would be very unfair not to also take note of the kindness and friendliness of the majority of the Irish people. Even under such long standing stress they have never lost the capacity for caring and their never ending joy for life. Hopefully the minority who have disrupted the lives of the Northern Ireland citizenry for so many, many years finally see the merit in extending that caring to all their fellow countrymen, and once the cycle is broken, and  their children are allowed to grow up with hearts free of hatred, Ireland will truly be the land St. Patrick Day celebrations paint it as being. Perhaps at long last the rainbows will really and truly fulfil their promise and God's Grace finally shine on the children of Northern Ireland. I sincerely pray this is so.

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