According to my Forgotten English Page-A-Day Calendar (so wonderfully given to me by Rachelle), we need to be celebrating Sheelah’s Day today with LOTS of whisky, specifically peat-reek-whisky. And yes, I spelled whisky correctly.
Here’s the scoop…
peat-reek-whisky:
highland whisky, distilled over peat fires (from Alexander Warrack’s Scots Dialect Dictionary, 1911)
Sheelah’s Day:
The day after St. Patrick’s Day is Sheelah’s Day, or the Festival in Honour of Sheelah. Its observers are not so anxious to determine who Sheelah was as they are earnest in her celebration. Some say she was Patrick’s wife, others that she was Patrick’s mother, while all agree that her immortal memory is to be maintained by potations of whisky. The shamrock worn on St. Patrick’s Day should also be worn on Sheelah’s Day, and on the latter night be “drowned” in the last glass. Yet it frequently happens that the last glass of St. Patrick’s Day, and another “last glass” or two, or more, on the same night deluges the over-sodden trefoil. This is not quite correct, but it is endeavoured to be remedied the next morning by the display of a fresh shamrock which is steeped at night in honour of Sheelah with equal devotedness.
- William Hone’s Every-Day Book, or Everlasting Calendar, 1827
Now that’s a holiday I can get in to.