Croí follain agus gob fliuch

St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow. (So is Evacuation Day—basically a Bostonian work-around to make the occasion an actual legal holiday.) There's been a radio commercial here in Boston for the past few weeks that uses some variant on the phrase "Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day." My lovely wife and I thought this would be a good marketing tack for the Boston Symphony to promote this weekend's performances of Mahler 3.

ANNOUNCER: On St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish—even a nervous Austrian Jew!

MAHLER (in the voice of the Lucky Charms leprechaun): I'm Gustav Mahler! Come and be hearin' me Third Symphony! The trees, the flowers—they've all been talkin' to me! We'll even have a chorus of wee little ones!

My last name notwithstanding, I'm one-quarter Irish, although, to put things in perspective, that makes me only half as much a man of the auld sod as, say, Richard Nixon. On the other hand, a childhood's worth of sunburned freckles has to count for something, right? Besides, on St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish—even Toru Takemitsu! Here's his arrangement of "Londonderry Air," AKA "Danny Boy," as performed by Kosei Kubota.