NATIONAL CELEBRATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 22, 17 March 1893, Page 20

NATIONAL CELEBRATION.

St Patrick's Day will be celebrated in Dunedin by a concert of National music in the Garrison Hall. It is hardly necessary to add much to this announcement in order to secure a full attendance on the occasion. The National music of Irehnd is allowed by every one of taste or musical discernment to be of a very beautiful kind, haviag charms for tha most cultiva'ei ear, as well as far tbe simplest. Natiojal celebrations in the colonies, also, are invariably well supported. When, for example, Scotch colonis's every year hold tha commemoration of their poet Burnß, the cv nt ia one of interest to settlers of all races. The rignt of the nation to whem the poet especially belonged to magnify the occasion in a particular manaer as exceptionally their own, is admitted, but, for all, it has a bigh interest as deservedly celebrating the memory of one to whom the world at large, or the English-speaking world at least, is a debtor. The celebration of St Patrick's Day should h»ve for all enlightened people, whatever may bj their shade of opinion, a similar interest. St Patrick was a pioneer not only of OarisJiaoity but of civilisation, and all Europe owed to him, as such, in tbe persons of his earlier successors, a debt. Their monument is to be Been to this day, for instance, at lona in Scotland, and in Switzerland, and other parts of the Continent, their memories are preserved in local traditions or the names of cantons. Bat to cone to the programme. It commences with an orchestral overtare, the " Humours of Donaybrook " much reprobated Donaybrook, whose humours, indeed, are, for the most part, represented as bellicose. And yet, it would seem, that there is some touch of calumny in this. Fun and frolic were the order of the day, and, fjr that matter, of the night too, at Djnnybrook. What s ringsof jaunting-cars —an unbroken line almast, plied from the city, each going at a sourt trot, and bearing is fullest freight, three oa eacn side and one or two in the middle. Toere were circuses aad theatres, teois and booths, tragedians, comedians, clowns, tumblers, and eingers ; w lole dramatic companies unier the broad heavens ; jugglers and gamblers ani miustiels. There were lanes of cookery in the open air, tha thr e-legged pot of capacious size bubbling up over the live cjals, and giving out its apetising fumes of cabbage and bacon ; rows upon rows of pols — cot forgetting the p >tatoes. In every tent was a door laid down od which the rieft dancer exercised, not the foreign fantastic toe, but the good ol 1-fasbioaed steps of the jig and reel, racy of the soil. Throngs of merrymakers were everywhere, and it required dexterity to make one'a way about anung the hilarious crowd. Buf, as for fighting — well, perhaps, some votary of the bowl, lowing with naggins of whißky. may, now and then, have been quarrelsome in his cups — but merriment, not fighting, was the order of the day. Donnybrook fair has passed away with the old times, but let us preserve its memory, at least, in music. Of different associations is the " Irish Emigrant," Lidy Dufferin's sad song— alas I too truly founded on fact — as pragmatic writers, who form Mr Oscar Wiide's especial horror, say.— F.r too majy a Bad snrvivor basin very deed gone away, leaving his beloved dead behind him, to th« new world — never to forget old lieland,