St Patrick's Day - 2018

No gigs today.  Which doesn't displease me.  There was a time it would have. But any more the lure of wads of cash pressed down and over-flowing doesn't overcome my distaste for the . . . ambience, I suppose you could call it.  Most of the calls are to play in bars.  Well, actually all of them but one this year and that one didn't pan out.

Since none of my other venues - none of which involved roaring drunks - called, I spent a quiet day with the small pipes and the melodeon.  And some reading.

Speaking of reading, how about a good Life of St Patrick?    Here's one reproduced on the Trias Thaumaturga blog.  It's originally from John Gilmary Shea's "Our Faith and its Defenders: comprising the trials and triumphs of the defenders of our faith in America",  New York, 1894; pp 121-125.

You can find it here.


A collect for St Patrick:

O God, who for the preaching of thy glory unto the Gentiles was pleased to send forth blessed Patrick, thy Confesor and Bishop: grant by his merits and intercessions; that we may through thy mercy be enabled to accomplish those things which thou commandest us to do.  Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Some piping would be appropriate for today even if I didn't get any in using the big guys.  Here's the medly entry in last summer's world's pipe band championship from the St Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band from Dublin.