Happy St. Pat’s, a day bespeckled with glee and doused in green. The mere thought of it makes me click my heels and do a jig. Every March 17 Mom would concoct green milk and green mashed potatoes. She wasn’t a cook for whom things normally turned out that color (except the peas) so it was OK. In fact, it was quite fun. Many amusing things come directly from the Irish. We have bagpipes, blarney stones, Celtic jazz and leprechauns, although they tend to lose their infinite charm when they are caught hawking sugar-coated cereals on TV. Three of the most important things the Irish gave to civilization are literature, lore & corned beef hash (not necessarily in that order).

Come to think of it, they probably didn’t give us the hash, that must have come from a screenless trailer park somewhere down south and perfected at places like Denny’s. But the corned beef part is definitely Irish -- you can smell it all the way down the block at any Irish feast or pubs that have shamrocks in their window and happen to serve food.

When I think of corned beef, two amusing anecdotes come to mind. The first concerns the hash concoction, a midnight snack chosen by the friend of a friend who came home one night quite drunk. After frying up the hash, practically inhaling it in his inebriated state, the fellow passed out on his kitchen linoleum. He awoke the next morning, hungover, only to find an empty can of dog food perched atop his trash.

The second ditty involves Grandpa John, fire chief and chef in residence in downtown Detroit. Although most people clamored for his cooking, my brother and I were wary one day about some suspicious-looking meat. Grandpa assured us it was ham, tricking us into trying it. We thus had met corned beef.

If you delve further into Irish lore, you find myths, legends, castles, and the luck o’ the Irish. A favorite practice of mine is trying to find the four leaf clover that never exists. Hours of fun can be yours by cobbling together a fake one with an extra leaf and Krazy Glue, arranging it neatly on white cotton fluff in a little ring box and giving it to Tracy O’Conner as a birthday gift (not that I have ever done such a thing).

Irish mumming is another interesting custom. A band of amateur troubadours would go door to door through the hillsides putting on performances. They would be dressed in costume -- always in masks -- and would sometimes get quite violent. The owners of the houses they entered were expected to serve them refreshments and not get mad when they broke their kitchen table. This practice gave rise to our modern-day trick-or-treating (which is sadly almost non-existent in New York City).

Speaking of treats, it would be a sin to go through life without reading Irish literature. One of my favorite graduate classes was just that. It helped immensely that it was taught by one of my mentors Tom Boyle who shared my twisted sense of humor and let me get away with an entire term paper devoted to comparing scatological references in Roddy Doyle’s "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" and Patrick McCabe’s "Butcher Boy." Yes, for eight whole pages I wrote about sh-t.

I highly recommend both novels, as I would recommend the poetry of W. B. Yeats, all of Oscar Wilde and Irish drama -- from "The Playboy of the Western World" to my buddy Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot."

It would be equally as sinful to forget James Joyce. Just the mention of his name sends tingles down my spine -- as if I had just kissed the very blarney stone itself. Joyce’s writing sums up the underbelly of Dublin, complete with the sordid darkness that lurks in its residents’ heads. You need a strong stomach for some of his work -- just to stop from getting dizzy while reading Molly’s monologue in "Ulysses." His short story, "Araby," is another shocker. The tale concludes with the lines "...I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." Ugh! Raise your hand if you can relate.

Finally, we cannot leave the Irish literature category without at least mentioning Jonathan Swift’s "Modest Proposal," a side-splitting essay about the potato famine. Although the terms "side-splitting" and "potato famine" at first glance don’t appear compatible, you may change your mind after reading Swift’s idea. Since food is scarce and people are starving, he proposes an alternative: eating the children.