From Wikipedia: "Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit. 'the Day of the Festival of Patrick'), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland),[6] the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland,[5] and celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general.[7] Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilís, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.[8] Christians who belong to liturgical denominations also attend church services[7][9] and historically the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday's tradition of alcohol consumption.[7][8][10][11]
Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland,[12] Northern Ireland,[13] the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (for provincial government employees), and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated in the United Kingdom,[14] Canada, United States, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, especially amongst Irish diaspora. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival.[15] Modern celebrations have been greatly influenced by those of the Irish diaspora, particularly those that developed in North America. However, there has been criticism of Saint Patrick's Day celebrations for having become too commercialized and for fostering negative stereotypes of the Irish people.[16]"
Celtic Mythology by 
Celtic Modern by
This resource offers an opportunity to reflect critically on some of the insistent 'othering' that has accompanied much cultural production in and on the Celtic World, and that have prohibited serious critical engagement with what are sometimes described as the 'traditional' and 'folk' music of Europe.
Companion to Irish Traditional Music by 
Music and the Irish Literary Imagination by
Harry White examines the influence of music in the development of the Irish literary imagination from 1800 to the present day. He identifies music as a preoccupation which originated in the poetry of Thomas Moore early in the nineteenth century. He argues that this preoccupation decisively influenced Moore's attempt to translate the 'meaning' of Irish music into verse, and that it also informed Moore's considerable impact on the development of European musicalromanticism, as in the music of Berlioz and Schumann. White then examines how this preoccupation was later recovered by W.B. Yeats, whose poetry is imbued with music as a rival presence to language. In its readings of Yeats, Synge, Shaw and Joyce, the book argues that this striking musical awareness hada profound influence on the Irish literary imagination, to the extent that poetry, fiction and drama could function as correlatives of musical genres. Although Yeats insisted on the synonymous condition of speech and song in his poetry, Synge, Shaw and Joyce explicitly identified opera in particular as a generic prototype for their own work. Synge's formal musical training and early inclinations as a composer, Shaw's perception of himself as the natural successor to Wagner, and Joyce's no lessstriking absorption of a host of musical techniques in his fiction are advanced in this study as formative (rather than incidental) elements in the development of modern Irish writing.Music and the Irish Literary Imagination also considers Beckett's emancipation from the oppressive condition of words in general (and Joyce in particular) through the agency of music, and argues that the strong presence of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Janácek in the works of Brian Friel is correspondingly essential to Friel's dramatisation of Irish experience in the aftermath of Beckett. The book closes with a reading of Seamus Heaney, in which the poet's own preoccupation with thecurrency of established literary forms is enlisted to illuminate Heaney's abiding sense of poetry as music.
While Irish music covers an enormous spectrum of artists and styles, traditional Irish and Celtic music frequently offers specific instruments and techniques. Instruments often include flutes and whistles, string instruments like violins, harps, mandolins and guitars, hand drums like the bodhran, and Irish pipes (or Uilleann pipes, the air for the instrument provided by an arm pump rather than via the player's lungs like other bagpipes). Information about different instruments can be found below, as well as samples of traditional Irish folk music. A large selection of Irish music of many kinds can also be found through Naxos Music Library World (go to the database, log in as prompted, go to "Cultural Groups", section "I" for Irish, with many selections under "Irish", "Irish-American, "Irish-Canadian", etc.) Select readings can also be found in the box "Celebrating Irish Arts & Culture" to the left.
Pygmalion by 
The Wonder by 
A Short History of Ireland by 
