Belfast:Even the buskers changed their tune for a feel-good St Patrick's Day celebration in Belfast.
Instead of the usual Radiohead and Oasis, crowd-pleasing street musicians played Whiskey in the Jar and the Black Velvet Band.
Thousands of people had lined the city-centre streets for a raucous and lively parade, the second to be funded by Belfast City Council.
The run-up to St Patrick's Day was once synonymous with bickering and accusations of begrudgery between parties on the council, which would not fund an official parade.
Since 2005, perhaps because there have been bigger political snakes to banish, St Patrick's Day in Belfast enjoys £100,000 in council funding.
Saturday's crowd was mostly free of potentially divisive Tricolours and Celtic jerseys, though several pairs of glasses and numerous faces were coloured green, white and gold.
The air was shrill with whistles and the tinkling of the bells on jester hats as the street vendors flogged their wares.
"It'll set you off well," said one, his day's work done as he sold the last of his jester hats to an immaculately coiffed woman.
The parade was led from the City Hall by excitable stilt walkers in white, followed by giant angels.
Chinese dragons and snakes were pursued by St Patrick, borne aloft by walkers holding him with giant sticks who helped him bop to the beat of Chinese drums.
This St Patrick wore a ginger beard - and there was a consensus among the crowd that the man who brought Christianity to Ireland had been a stranger to the razor as male and female alike sported stick-on facial hair. Traditional musicians were followed by representatives from community groups, dancers of the Ulster-Scots and Irish varieties, and children's football teams.
The parade made its way down High Street, close to other symbols of the new Belfast from the trendy Malmaison Hotel to a sculpture sponsored by Smirnoff and condemned in some quarters as a paean to binge drinkers.
With its raggle-taggle band of followers, the celebration of the new Irishness of the new Belfast then turned into Ulster Street and on to Custom House Square for a free concert.
Traditional group Blackthorn serenaded the "belles of Belfast city" with a rousing rendition of I'll Tell Me Ma, practically the city's civic anthem.
They were followed by the South City Highland Dancers, Samantha Mumba, boyband Streetwize and Scottish singer Sandie Thom.
The revellers then dispersed, but to the annoyance of shoppers the whistles went on.