Hibernian/Hibernation Mood Disorder

I've been feeling especially Irish this week, and not only in the usual Blarney-and-whiskey spirit that arises in many of us around St. Patrick's Day. All the news of natural disasters, foreclosures and layoffs has me in a sort of fatalistic Joycean funk, and the headlines seem to ring with echoes of Yeats: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ..."

Then again, perhaps it's just all this bloomin’ snow that we've been buried under for the past month that's getting to me ...

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

— James Joyce, "The Dead"

Surely, the Irish are the kings of Melancholia.

Whatever the cause of this Hibernian/Hibernation Mood Disorder, I'm sure the cure can be found in a noggin of Powers and an afternoon of jigs and reels. On Sunday, as our St. Patrick's Day hangovers will be fading into memory, the East Grafton Street Band will perform in a Third Sunday at Three Concert at St. James Lutheran Church in Gloversville.

I haven't heard this group perform live, but they sound pretty good in cyberspace. Check out the following: