Drowning the shamrock

For a flavour of what's happening this St Patrick's Day, ireland.com's St. Patrick's Festival site http://www.ireland.com/ events/st.patricks/2001/ offers video footage of the oldest St Patrick's Day parade in the world live from Savannah, Georgia. The site will also broadcast footage of the parade in New York and video reports from locations around Dublin on the day. The site offers plenty of trivia with online games, a selection of electronic postcards, Irish language lessons, video greetings, a database of events around the world and a message from the Taoiseach to the Irish people.

Events may have been cancelled around the country but the organisers of Dublin's Patrick's Festival have promised to reschedule festivities later in the year. In the meantime, the official St Patrick's Festival site http://www.stpatricksday.ie/ offers online games, a shop, electronic postcards, a message board and details of changes made to planned activities over the St Patrick's Festival weekend.

The Belfast Telegraph http:// www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk has a series of 20 live video links to pubs around the North where readers can see what's happening. They also provide a messaging service, a gallery of images and links to news stories related to St Patrick's Day.

A cursory search of Altavista http:// www.altavista.com/ came up with a number of sites related to St Patrick's Day and, while most results were linked to singlepage sites where users had posted accounts and photographs of their Paddy's Day experiences. One site purporting to educate visitors of the vagaries of St Patrick's Day parades caught the eye. Conrad Bradley's Irish Studies page http:// www.ncf.carleton.ca/bj333/ HomePage.home.html links to a page warning of the dangers of parades and claims they project messages of racism, confrontation, and hatred. Interestingly enough, the site has a link to a page listing loyalist songs such as The Billy Boys.

St Patrick's Day http://www.st-patricks-day.com/ looks at the legends of St Patrick and the shamrock. The site also has links to St Patrick's Day sites around the world including sites in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the US, and Singapore. Also featured are links to Irish organisations, St Patrick societies, genealogy, Irish pubs and miscellaneous Irish sites.