May the Irish hills caress you. May her lakes and rivers bless you. May the luck of the Irish enfold you. May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.

This quatrain is typically presented as a modern “Irish blessing” used in toasts, greeting cards, and St. Patrick’s Day well-wishing rather than as a traceable statement by a single identifiable author. Its imagery—hills, lakes, rivers, “luck of the Irish,” and Saint Patrick—draws on widely recognizable symbols of Irish landscape and cultural identity, blending secular good fortune with Christian benediction. In practice it functions as a send-off or affectionate wish for travelers and loved ones, echoing the cadence of older Gaelic/Irish-English blessing traditions, but it is most often encountered in late-20th- and 21st-century popular compilations of “Irish blessings.”

The blessing offers protection and prosperity through a layered appeal to place, people, and patron saint. The “Irish hills,” “lakes,” and “rivers” personify the land as nurturing—nature itself is imagined as actively comforting and sanctifying the recipient. “Luck of the Irish” adds a folkloric, secular register of good fortune, while invoking Saint Patrick frames the wish within Ireland’s Christian heritage and the idea of spiritual guardianship. The cumulative effect is a portable piece of cultural belonging: even away from Ireland, the recipient is symbolically wrapped in Irish landscape, communal goodwill, and sacred oversight.