In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day yesterday, O’Neill’s, an Irish pub in Midtown, served bangers and mash, a traditional Irish breakfast of sausage and potatoes.

Tracie Ruggiero, however, was craving something a little closer to the source.

For Ms. Ruggiero, 34, and thousands of St. Patrick’s Day revelers, breakfast was beer.

The parade up Fifth Avenue looked like a nice family affair from the TV behind the bar. Inside the dimly lit pub, a more bacchanalian mood, accompanied by fiddle and Irish whistle, prevailed.

“My husband told me I could only have one beer an hour,” Ms. Ruggiero, who works as a flight attendant for American Airlines, said. “But he said nothing about shots.”

If it isn’t clear by now, Ms. Ruggiero’s favorite holiday is St. Patrick’s Day, so her appetite for ale is not wholly unjustified.

“I will work for American on Christmas,” she said. “I will fly any holiday, except St. Patrick’s Day.”

Despite the tenor of her last name, Ms. Ruggiero is three-quarters Irish, so her enthusiasm for St. Patrick’s Day in New York is a point of pride. She, along with a few other friends, began their drinking at 10 a.m. A few barstools down, Gerry Lawlor, who is visiting from Dublin, said it was not so much St. Patrick’s Day, but celebrating in New York, at an authentic Irish bar no less, that got him hoisting pints in the early morning.

Whether in Ireland or New York, the Irish know how to have fun, Mr. Lawlor said. They even have many words for it: crack, slag, gas.

“This is more like home,” Mr. Lawlor said. “This is great crack.”

It took a few minutes, but Mr. Lawlor, acutely aware of the word’s American connotation, dutifully explained himself. “The only drug I take is Viagra,” he said. Time was flowing like the beer, except the clock behind the bar seemed frozen at a few minutes before 10. In fact, the clock is frozen, for a reason. “So bleary-eyed customers can look up and say, ‘Hey it’s only 10 o’clock, pour me another drink,’ ” a bartender quipped.

There is a darker reason, built on the legend of a famous Irishman, the patron saint of the pub, who was hanged centuries ago. The owner of O’Neill’s, Ciaran Staunton, would not elaborate.

Outside, two of the pub’s most famous customers lapped up drink like dogs. Dearg and Megan, the 3-foot-tall Irish wolfhounds that helped lead Governor Pataki’s color guard during breakfast yesterday at the Waldorf-Astoria, prefer plastic bowls to silver for their water, their owner, Maureen English, said.

“English is an Irish name,” she said with incredulity.

Not that St. Patrick’s Day is for the Irish, or the 2.1 million of Irish descent who live in the New York area. By the looks of pubs in Midtown around 2:30 p.m. yesterday, thousands of others quit work early to begin their celebrating in time for the parade’s bagpipers to make their annual march back downtown to play for the bar crowds.

On a day when everyone is rumored to be Irish, it was only appropriate, then, that Raul Silva, 24, of Portuguese descent, entered the packed bar. He was with his “Irish lass,” and they took their place to await the bagpipers’ serenade.

“If you get drunk at 10 in the morning any other day, you’ve got a problem,” said Mr. Silva. “On St. Patrick’s Day it’s all right. You know why? Because everybody else is drunk.”