Make St. Patrick’s Day great for the shamrock again, says Manhattan bar-owner Shaun Clancy.
By Irish Echo Staff
Suffice it to say, Enda Kenny is unlikely to don one of these as he presented the bowl of shamrock to President Donald Trump.
A “Make America Great Again” baseball cap with a St. Patrick’s Day theme is causing a furor as a result of its four leaf clover.
The green hat marketed by the Trump brand looks fine from the front, but it’s the rear that will raise eyebrows.
Instead of a three-leaf shamrock there is a depiction of a four-leaf clover.
Now a New York pub owner who a few years ago banned the singing of “Danny Boy” on his premises for St. Patrick’s Day if decrying the hat while offering free beer for what he describes as “erroneous” four-leaf clover t-shirts.
Shaun Clancy, owner of Foley’s Pub & Restaurant on West 33rd Street in Midtown Manhattan has his two eyes firmly fixed on the four leaves.
"Somehow, the four-leaf clover has made its way onto t-shirts, greeting cards, boxes of cereal, and other items as an Irish symbol, but the shamrock really is the more appropriate symbol,” said Clancy, a native of Butlersbridge, County Cavan.
Clancy, according to a release, is determined to take St. Patrick's Day-related four-leaf clover merchandise out of circulation by offering a free pint of Killian's Irish Red to anyone who trades in his or her clothing featuring the four-leaf clover as an Irish symbol from March 1 through St. Patrick's Day, Friday, March 17.
The surrendered shirts will be donated to charity.
The shamrock, added the release, a three-leaf clover, is a widely recognized symbol of Ireland. It was used by St. Patrick to explain the Holy Trinity when he converted pagan Ireland to Christianity. The tradition of wearing a shamrock on St Patrick’s Day can be traced to the 1700s.
“St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of the achievement of people of Irish descent in America, and the shamrock - not the four-leaf clover - is an important part of that heritage," Clancy said.
"I'm not sure how the mix-up started, but I'd like to see it stopped."
Clancy's banning of the singing of “Danny Boy” cause quite a stir back in 2008.
Among the reasons he listed for prohibiting the song was that it is overplayed at the expense of other great Irish songs, its lyrics were written by a man who never set foot in Ireland, and that “Danny Boy” was frequently played at funerals and was considered one of the “top 25 most depressing songs of all time.”
