I wear my green on the inside

Well, here we are again -- a day of tricolour scarves, wigs, green paper leprechaun hats and green beer (when everyone who knows anything knows that the true colour of Irish beer is black).

Last year in my pop culture class, I gave my students a quiz when we started our unit on advertising and consumer culture -- two quizzes, actually, each of ten questions. For the first, I put up a series of ten images of brand name logos and told the students to identify them. As you might imagine, the entire class scored ten out of ten -- and were quite pleased with themselves. The next ten images were of people and things they should know ... Pierre Trudeau, Malcolm X, a trillium, as well as a handful of flags (the point of this exercise, as you have likely guessed, was to demonstrate how instinctual recognition of brand logos has become, whereas actual honest-to-god knowledge of stuff comes a bit harder ... not that being able to recognize a photo of FDR gets you into law school or anything).

The point of this is that one of the flags I tossed up was the Irish flag -- thinking that would be a gimme. But less than one third of the class recognized it ... at which point I shook my head at them and said "OK, everyone who got it wrong has to stay home on St. Patrick's Day this year," and some hearty soul in the back row shouted out his support with a "YEAH!"

At any rate, that incident stuck with me, and I gave my students a St. Patrick's Day quiz on March 17 ... a tradition I'm maintaining this year with the following quiz.

SO -- a score of less than 8/15 and you have to stay home tonight. Honour system here, people! No consulting Wikipedia!

1. What is the capital of Ireland?

2. Name one of the original four counties of Ireland (double marks for all four).

3. Name three Irish writers who are not James Joyce or W.B. Yeats.

4. In what year did the Easter Rising take place?

5. What revolutionary leader is famous for leading a French-aided uprising on the west coast of Ireland in 1798?

6. Fill in the blanks: “If you ever go across the sea to Ireland / It may be at the closing of the day / You can sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh / And watch the sun go down on ______________”

7. What is the name of Ireland’s mythical female incarnation?

8. What ecological catastrophe in the mid-nineteenth century caused massive emigration from Ireland and gave New York City a tradition of Irish cops?

9. What is the name of the political wing of the IRA? (double points if you also give its English translation)

10. What tasty mixture of stout and ale is also the nickname for the feared Loyalist paramilitaries that targeted Republicans between 1920-22?

11. What British parliamentarian and general is notorious for his brutal invasion of Ireland and his avowed intention to send all Catholics “To Hell or Connacht!”?

12. At what famous landmark outside of Dublin did U2 film their video for “Pride (In the Name of Love)”?

13. How do you say “Ireland” in Gaelic?

14. What was the name of the Republican splinter group that came to prominence in the late 1960s, and which is usually blamed for the “Troubles”?

15. What popular Irish proponent of Home Rule in the late 1800s fell from grace when his affair with married woman Kitty O’Shea was revealed?