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A Saint Patrick's Day message from Ireland: Thank you, America

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The Great Irish Famine memorial in Battery Park in New York's Financial District

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As a rule, Irishmen only cry at football games. But a walk around New York City can do strange things to a man.

I confess to some tears at the birth of my son. My eyes may have moistened somewhat as my wife said the words, "I do"; but I maintain this was just the uncomfortable rental suit. Nothing, however, prepared me for what happened in New York City one fine spring morning. Let me tell you how I ended up publicly emoting in NYC, with nary a football in sight:

On a short visit to New York, my wife and I wandered down Manhattan; past Fire Department stations, bastions of old Irish America. We saw the names of those who had so bravely rushed in to the Twin Towers inscribed on lovingly tended memorials: O'Callaghans and Sullivans alongside Garbarinis and Weinbergs. Pictures of handsome, smiling faces with stark words underneath:

Date of death: September 11 2001 / Place of Burial: World Trade Center

Silence and sadness at St Paul's Chapel overlooking Ground Zero. On we walked, reverentially, past the gaping void of the World Trade Center.

Then, I saw a mirage. There, in the middle of downtown Manhattan, was a springtime Irish hillside, complete with a tumbledown stone cottage, bracken and grasses. The purple foxgloves were even in flower, just as at our own Irish farmhouse, which we had left only the day before. Glass skyscrapers towered incongruously on either side. I approached cautiously. Was this surreal hallucination the effect of jet lag, or maybe an after-effect of last night's beers?

My tentative hand met cold stone, confirming that it was real: In the middle of Manhattan, there is a tiny park, the Irish Hunger Memorial. A ruined emigrant's cottage transported from County Mayo stands amid wildflowers and stones from each county of Ireland. Carved in black marble are texts that vividly describe the Great Famine of 1847 and the exodus that followed. As many as one and a half million died, and two million more fled the worst apocalypse of 19th century Europe. Here, on these very quaysides in New York City, many found shelter.

Stunned by this unexpected pathos we walked slowly, like the bereaved, toward the Hudson River. Then, turning a corner, there it was: the Statue of Liberty stood graceful in the blue distance. This immense figure was the first sight seen by millions of Irish immigrants who had never before beheld a structure more than thirty feet tall. Yet here, after many hard weeks at sea, they were met by a benevolent colossus which proclaimed that salvation was at hand, and that a new future free of tyranny and poverty was possible.

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