Where else is St Patrick's Day a holiday? On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, which isn't going to let a volcano spoil its big day, reports David Hanington.

Danny Sweeney brushes down his emerald-green trousers, pulls on his forest-green jacket, sets his green-and-gold cap to a rakish angle and plants an oversize shamrock in his lapel. Then he looks in the mirror. He likes what he sees.

"Okay, girls," he yells into the adjacent bedroom. "We're all set. St Paddy, here we come. Let's go party!" His wife, Margaret, and their 16-year-old daughter, Sarah, emerge to join him. They are similarly fitted out, in green dresses with green accessories, dressed up to beat the band.

It is similar to scenes that will be taking place all over Ireland on Monday. Except this isn't Ireland. This is Montserrat, the tiny emerald isle of the Caribbean, which has had more than its share of troubles lately. This weekend, those traumas will be set aside as the islanders get down to the serious business of celebrating St Patrick's Day with a carnival parade and a moonlit banquet on the sands of Little Bay.

"Man, I tell you that's gonna be one big feast," says Sweeney. "We'll have goat water, mountain chicken, sweet potatoes, all the trimmings." Goat water is a highly spiced Irish stew made with goat instead of lamb, and mountain chickens are long-legged frogs. "St Paddy's Day here is a blast. You think we'd let a little thing like a volcano spoil it?"

That "little thing" is Soufriere Hills. For centuries it was dormant - and one of the island's greatest assets. Tourists would tramp through the rainforest, past the Great Alps waterfall, and arrive at the Soufriere, with its acrid sulphur odour, like rotten eggs, and its spectacular eagle's-eye views over the island. It was a panorama of Paradise.

No more. In 1996, the volcano began to rumble, triggering mini-earthquakes and ash falls. Then, in 1997, it became a killer. Torrents of white-hot ash cascaded down the hillsides, destroying everything in their path. Nineteen people were burnt to death as they worked in their fields.

The volcano spewed lava and ash over the entire southern section of the island. The capital, Plymouth, hastily evacuated, became a ghost town. It is now a tropical Pompeii, buried under 20 feet of ash. The only visible sign of a formerly busy, thriving community is the spire of St Patrick's church, poking forlornly out of the wasteland.

The volcano wreaked havoc with Montserrat's economy and infrastructure. The airport was destroyed, as was the island's main port. The most fertile areas of the island in the south - cotton fields, lime groves, everything - disappeared beneath a slurry-coloured blanket of lava and ash. They now resemble the landscape of the moon. The population of the island shrank from 11,000 to about 3,000 as the inhabitants, especially the young, left to seek work and build new lives in Britain and on the nearby islands of Antigua and St Kitts.

One of the vanished villages was St Patrick's. But now, with their saint's day looming, Montserratians are coming home - temporarily, at least. The ferry from Antigua will be full of returning emigrants determined to make the celebrations go with a swing.

As Colin Jeffers, who has seen his family home and business swallowed up by the angry mountain, put it: "We Montserratians are a resilient lot. We don't stay down for long. Some people suggested that, since there isn't too much to celebrate, we should cancel St Patrick's Day. That's absurd. It's our history."

The island's Irish connection springs from the 17th century, when a community of Irish Catholics, persecuted on the neighbouring British island of St Kitts, decided to leave and settle in Montserrat.

As slave owners, the Irish incomers were not noticeably more enlightened than their British counterparts. But they gave their name to the places where they settled - hence the island is dotted with villages such as Riley's, Kinsale and Cork Hill. With supreme irony, the volcano itself is also known as Galway's Soufriere.

The old-time Irish plantation owners celebrated St Patrick's Day, of course. So the slaves saw this as their opportunity to rebel and escape.

They rose up on St Patrick's Day in 1768, while their owners were wining and dining at Government House. But the revolutionaries' triumph was short lived. The slaves were recaptured, their ringleaders garotted and hanged.

To this day, however, Montserratians regard March 17th as a double celebration: St Patrick's Day and Slave Freedom Day. Theirs is the only country - apart, of course, from Ireland - to celebrate it as a national holiday.

This year's programme has had to be amended slightly, on account of the forces of nature. Since November, the volcano has begun to belch more ash into previously unaffected parts of the island. The so-called exclusion zone has been extended, and the attractive area of Olde Towne, site of the island's oldest and grandest hotel, the Vue Pointe, has been declared off limits. So the Slave Feast will now be held in a huge marquee at Little Bay, beside the ferry landing that is Montserrat's main point of contact with the outside world.

Still, that will not deter the revellers. Ann Marie Dewar, chairwoman of the St Patrick's Day committee, says: "We've got a great programme of events. We're announcing the design of Montserrat's new national dress - no clues, but it's sure to feature something very Irish. There's a junior calypso contest, the Freedom Walk and, of course, the Slave Feast and Heritage Day."

Montserrat's indigenous version of St Patrick's Day has some unusal takes on the island's Irish links, including the local dance, a bizarre blend of limbo, calypso and the jig. The festival village will teem with masqueraders doing whip and stick dancing and drinking a lethal-looking cocktail the colour of crème de menthe.

"It's a secret recipe," says Sweeney. "It's bright green, basically rum with a lot of other stuff added in, then garnished with basil and mint. I call it the Green Goddess. After one, you're happy. After three, you feel no pain."

As WPC Eileen Irish (no less), one of the residents who has stayed on to help rebuild the future, puts it: "We've been through a lot lately, but in the end we'll win through. So next week, people won't be miserable. We will be joyful. We will be hopeful. We will be laughing - just to keep from crying."