ST Patrick may have banished the snakes from this land, but rather than interfering with the island's ecosystem, his time might have been better spent rooting out the surrogate advertising that slithered its serpentine way through the St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin yesterday.
Pre-publicity for this year's event stressed the participation of community and street theatre companies, such as Macnas, Craic Na Coillte, Theatre of Fire, and Down to Earth, as well as the evening entertainment from Catalan company, Els Comediants. But it was the commercial enterprises who hijacked the day, using the wide-eyed children, parents and sightseers as a captive audience for a harsh and unignorable stream of advertisements.
Soccer hero Paul McGrath, this year's Grand Marshal, led the parade from a green-painted vintage car. Galway company Macnas offered their latest pageant, Snakes Alive. As befits the country's most mature street theatre group, Macnas turned in a frenetic, pyrotechnic show, centring on what was perhaps the parade's most detailed float, featuring St Patrick surveying his rocky land.
Any prize for the most enigmatic treatment of the St Patrick's Day theme would easily have been taken by Theatre of Fire, with its float "The Luck of The Irish". This exhibit, an immense jagged cardboard mountain, bellowed pink, orange and yellow smoke from its heart, while occasionally a surly-looking Celtic rock band, featuring St Patrick on bass, bobbed out of its depths to the accompaniment of ear-splitting explosions.
These exciting interludes aside, the parade was hardly distinguishable from an overly extended television ad break. An oppressive number of the floats seemed to be sponsored by commercial interests.
One Irish supermarket paraded a typically unimaginative and blatantly promotional float. Figures dressed as the supermarket's own brand batteries, cola and washing powder danced ahead, while bored-looking staff waving streamers followed close behind.
Other product pushes came in quick succession. Some were carefully understated, others thunderingly direct. A cider company named after a blacksmith's tool kept its product in the mind by entering a mobile smithy's in the parade. Like many of the commercial participants, the connection between the float and St Patrick was not immediately apparent.