3 – Tie a green ribbon in your hair (Bridget’s birthday)

A satin green ribbon forming a loop against a bright lime green background.

Slainte, Auntie Bridget. Many happy returns on this your hundredth and thirty-first birthday. And Happy St Patrick's Day.

It’s a mite morbid, perhaps, wishing health and happiness to a girl who died two months shy of her 21st birthday.

I wanted to think of you that way, today, on your birthday and on this celebration of our Irish heritage.  Who better than the Irish at revelling at the odd bubbles of joy life occasionally bestows upon us?

“Yesterday was not observed as a general holiday in the city, though numbers of people bent on pleasure were to be seen, most wearing green ribbons, making their way to the various centres of amusement.”[1]

Okay, that’s about St Paddy’s Day celebrations on your brithday in 1893 in Brisbane, Queensland’s capital city.  

Brisbane is no small farming burg like Hendon, your hometown, but it looks like celebrations followed broadly the same patterns in Queensland towns, large and small.

Men, women and children line Elizabeth Street, in front of St. Stephen's Cathedral, watching a St. Patrick's Day parade around 1905. Publisher: Brisbane John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

Country celebrations of St Paddy’s Day, now that sounds like where the real fun was at.  Here’s the agenda for St Patrick’s Day Celebrations in Warwick, 1915. [2]  

Races (both horse and human).  Irish jigs.  Pipe bands playing.  A parade. And competitions – prizes for the best dressed Colleen under 12, the best dressed Colleen over 12 and the best-dressed Irish boy and his pony.

You might even have spent one of your birthdays in Warwick, Bridgie.  That prettiest of country towns is 25 kilometres away from Hendon.

St. Patrick's Day procession in Palmerin Street, Warwick, ca. 1915. Publisher: Brisbane John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

Then again, maybe you didn’t.  25 kilometres is a hell of a distance in the days before cars.  Farming families like the O’Callaghans would have had a ferocious amount of work to complete.  Gallivanting off on a train to celebrate even the most Irish of all saints might not have doable. 

Still, I like to think you tied a green ribbon in your hair and enjoyed the day. 

Happy Birthday and Happy Saint Paddy’s Day, Bridgie.

#WildBridgie

A copy of Bridget's birth certificate from 1893, showing her birthday as 17 March.

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[1] 1 ST. PATRICK'S DAY. (1893, March 18). The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933), p. 5. Retrieved March 17, 2024, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3557153

[2]"ST. PATRICK'S DAY" Warwick Examiner and Times (Qld. : 1867 - 1919) 25 February 1911: 4. Web. 18 Mar 2024 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article82201678>.