ST PATRICK HAS HIS DAY,
let Sheila have hers! BY LLOYD GORMAN
E
ven the most ardent agnostic would probably be better informed about St. Patricks Day than the vast majority of Irish people – including until very recently this writer – are about Sheelagh’s Day. But hot on the heels of the March 17 worldwide celebrations for the feast day of Ireland’s patron saint*, March 18 also used to be a day of significance and festivity for the Irish at home and abroad. Sheelagh’s Day (also spelt Shelagh, Sheila, Sheilah) – named supposedly after St. Patrick’s wife or mother – was traditionally celebrated as an extension of St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, but also Australia and Newfoundland where communities had grown from early emigration. While it has all but vanished, there is good evidence to suggest that Sheelagh’s Day was well known – even commonplace – in the fledgling days and decades of the country as a colony. The first documented mention of Sheelagh’s Day in Australia
14 | THE IRISH SCENE
Photos courtesy St. Patrick's Festival WA
appears to have been in The Sydney Gazette, on March 24, 1832. The article in question was a court report of a woman who tried to argue that she was drunk because of the day that it was. “Shelah’s Day — Martha Grayburn, ‘a would if I could, but I can’t’ sort of a lady, was brought up for the commission of divers peccadilloes on the evening of Sunday. Martha pleaded ‘Shelah’s Day’ in extenuation, and was ordered to ‘go and sin no more’.” The same court report in the Gazette gave an account of one Anne Kirk who “was accused of drenching her intestines to the tune of ‘drops o’brandy’, till she was in doubt whether it was this world or the next she inhabited. ‘La! Yer honor, I was only keeping up Shelah’s Day’, exclaimed Anne. ‘Then keep it up a month longer at the factory,’ responded his
worship, and she was handed off accordingly.” The insobriety and excuse for it of these two women was by no means an isolated incident. The following year (March 21, 1833) the Sydney Herald reported: “Mary Folkes, quite in the dumps, was charged by the charley, who picked her up, with rolling through the streets on Sheelah’s day, in a state unmentionable”. This article published in The Sydney Gazette (March 28, 1837) painted a broader picture. “It is somewhat extraordinary that upon St. Patrick and Sheelah’s Day, Good Friday, &c., there were less cases of drunkenness upon the Police Office list than upon any day for a month preceding. It was usually the custom for at least double the number to appear.” While St Patrick’s Day and Sheelagh’s Day were closely
