The Irish optimistically quip that if it weren’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all.
Which is to say, of course: bottoms up!
Indeed, whatever good luck the Irish had likely ran out some 9,000 years ago, when Ireland was first settled by the Nemedians, Fomorians and Milesians.
Contemporarily, the Emerald Isle, bogged down with debt, isn’t so green anymore. In fact, a former European Central Bank official cautioned Thursday that Ireland may require more aid in addition to the 85 billion-euro bailout it received in 2010.
Even the Fighting Irish can’t seem to catch a break – it’s all but assumed Notre Dame will be upset today by the Xavier Musketeers in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Truthfully, the “luck of the Irish” is an ironic phrase. The luck of the Irish is precisely bad luck – for all intents and purposes, the Irish are and have been an exceptionally unlucky people.
In fact, only whiskey bottles run drier than luck in Ireland. There’s the centuries of oppression by the Norse and the English. There’s the Irish Potato Famine – one million dead, one million fled. There’s the Easter Rising of 1916. There’s the Bloody Sundays of 1887, 1920, 1921 and 1972.
And there’s the gingers – rotten luck, indeed. But since Saturday is St. Patrick’s Day, the ubiquitous celebration of everything that’s green, Irish and alcoholic, we ought to joyfully commemorate the luck of the Irish.
Which is to say, of course, that the world ought to celebrate its own luck – for a world without the Irish would be an unfortunate one.
There would be no St. Patty’s Day, for one.
But there would also be no soda water, the creation of Trinity College professor Robert Percival in 1800 – which means we’d also not have any alcoholic beverages made with the fizzy seltzer.
For that matter, we’d be without whiskey, too, the appearance of which was first documented in Ireland in 1405. And it goes without saying that we’d be without Guinness, the popular Irish dry stout brewed in Dublin.
In turn, there would be no submarines, which, despite its “Yellow” variant’s ultimate popularity, was the design of Irishman John Phillip Holland in the late 19th century, whose prototype was the first such vessel commissioned by the U.S. and Royal Navies.
There’d be no tank, which was originally co-engineered by Dublin native Walter Gordon Wilson in 1915 at the behest of Winston Churchill.
Most importantly, though, the Irish have made substantial contributions to the world’s literature and arts.
Conan O’Brien, basically.
In all seriousness, Ireland has given us the music of U2, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy, for instance.
Moreover, for its size and population, Ireland has made a staggeringly disproportionate contribution to the world of literature.
Ireland has produced four Nobel Prize winners: W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Particularly esteemed, too, are the works of writers James Joyce and Oscar Wilde and satirist Jonathan Swift.
Without Ireland, there would even be no Count Dracula, the creation of Irish scribe Bram Stoker, whose “Dracula” all but defined the modern novel.
And tragically, without Ireland’s “Dracula,” there’d be no Count Chocula.
Which is to say nothing of the absence of Lucky Charms. In the end, we ought to always celebrate the bad luck of the Irish – and our good luck, too.
But especially on Saturday, wear green clothing, drink green beer, and be green with envy: Even for all their plight, the Irish are undoubtedly the luckiest people in the world.
Phil Sweeney is a 25-year-old English senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_PhilSweeney.
 
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