It was perhaps Cork 2005 director John Kennedy who made the most apposite comment of the weekend when he prefaced his remarks at the official opening in Cork City Hall with a special word of gratitude to the city's patron saint, St Finbarr.
"The only person I'm going to thank today is St Finbarr - he worked magic overnight and gave us a much different day than yesterday - thank you, St Finbarr," declared John after the driving rain and booming gales of Friday had threatened to ruin Cork's party.
The formalities began in Cork City Hall where two young performers from Belfast Community Circus wowed the 800 guests with a display of aerial gymnastics, twisting and entwining themselves high in the red curtains flanking the main stage.
After the premiere of a specially commissioned theatrical production, Red Sun, by Cork playwright Raymond Scannell, performed by 106 schoolchildren, it was outside for a rooftop feu de joie by 54 members of the Naval Service.
Several hundred people had already gathered on Parnell Bridge and Lapps Quay to watch as 2,005 balloons were released to soar into the clear azure yonder to announce that Cork was Europe's Capital of Culture.
But Cork is a city defined by its river and its channels and the main event, Awakening, was a carefully constructed representation of what, to most Corkonians, was a previously unheard of myth about a huge serpent rising from the river to be slain by St Finbarr.
It was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. but the 26,000 ticket holders were already thronging the quays flanking the location from 4 p.m. with thousands of children brimming with expectation to see the giant 600 metre serpent rise from the river. RTÉ was broadcasting the spectacle live and John Creedon and Kathryn Thomas played a neat two hander.
Sound problems meant that Corkonians on the quays didn't get to hear John Spillane sing his specially commissioned composition for Cork 2005, Fear An Rí, though it did give Kathryn Thomas a chance to mention "gorgeous Sean Óg Ó hAilpín and his brothers". Sean Óg himself had a central role when Setanta-like (i.e., Cú Chulainn rather than The Brother), he drove a flaming sliothar into the mouth of the serpent just as St Finbarr was supposed to have done.
The serpent - devised by the Waterford theatre group, Spraoi - was, in truth, a disappointing creature with the inflatable white spines of his back rising from the water at a number of points in the river and on St Patrick's Bridge. The fireworks began in earnest with Bob Geldof's Ten Alps company blasting off a barrage of pyrotechnics against the ever darkening sky.
Meanwhile John and Kathryn had given way to a medley of Irish hits from U2's Beautiful Day through Thin Lizzy, Van the Man, Rory Gallagher and The Hothouse Flowers right up to The Thrills and One Horse Town. The quays almost ignited as, to the sound of the EU anthem, Beethoven's Ode to Joy, fireworks whizzed off from the top of several buildings lining the riverside. Cork had finally been crowned European Capital of Culture 2005.
