I love being Irish, and I spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on what that means—especially around 17 March, when much of the world momentarily turns green. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, for all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.” In this single line, he captures something essential about the Irish spirit: a strange and beautiful paradox where joy and sorrow walk hand in hand. And if that isn’t Stoicism in a nutshell, what is?
The Irish have long faced hardship with a wry smile and a poet’s lament. A history punctuated by invasions, famine, and exile could have broken our spirits, but instead, it produced some of the world’s greatest storytellers, rebels, and philosophers—people who understood, as the Stoics did, that suffering is inevitable, but how one meets it is what truly defines a person.
Consider Chesterton’s merry wars, as he put it. Whether it is a centuries-long struggle for freedom or a heated pub debate about why Liverpool lost to Newcastle, the Irish have a way of turning battles into celebrations. Marcus Aurelius would surely have nodded in approval at the ability to fight without losing one’s spirit, to accept adversity without allowing it to erode one’s humour.
And then there are the sad songs. The Stoics would have understood them well—music as a means of engaging with fate, of embracing grief without being consumed by it. We do not shy away from sorrow; we sing about it, drink to it, and tell stories that transform pain into poetry. Seneca would have recognised the wisdom in this: to mourn, but not to despair; to acknowledge fate, but never to surrender to it.
Even St Patrick himself, kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland before returning as a missionary, embodied a Stoic resilience. He did not allow bitterness to dictate his fate. Instead, he embraced it, transforming hardship into purpose.
So, this St Patrick’s Day, whether you find yourself laughing over a pint or lost in the melancholy strains of an old Irish ballad, take a moment to appreciate the grand paradox of the Irish spirit. As both the Stoics and the Gaels remind us—life is at once tragic and beautiful, and the only thing to do is to meet it with courage, wit, and perhaps just a touch of madness.
Consilium 