Unlike the mass of the ‘new Irish,’ she doesn’t work for fear of being caught.

There are Irish-Americans who celebrate their roots at St. Patrick’s Day each year by belting out “Legion of the Rearguard” in a chrome-and-fern bar draped with green liquor ads for the night.

But the hard-core Irish come home to Sun Valley.

To the residents of the area, it is probably like a typical Irish fairy tale, in which the elves return to an enchanted glen on a certain night each year, from moonrise to moonset, apparitions from an ancient world.

Which, with poetic allowances for moonlight, is kind of the way it is. Except that, with the speed of American life, the ancient world was only 20 or 30 years ago. Back then, North Hollywood had a sizable Irish immigrant community, still visible in a couple of aggressively ethnic bars.

The immigrants’ Catholic parish was the Church of the Holy Rosary on Vineland Avenue. So Irish did the church become that in 1974 it was taken over by an order of Irish missionary priests, the Sacred Heart Fathers, who have staffed it ever since.

Just in time to see the immigrants grow prosperous enough to move away.

But each year on the Saturday nearest St. Patrick’s Day, they and their children come back for a party that built a lasting reputation in the parish’s Irish heyday.

And so they did last weekend, about 250 of them.

“We were all best friends here once,” said Skip Driscoll, an aerospace engineer who spent 10 years in the parish before moving to West Hills. “Now we see each other once a year at this party. Our kids all went to the parish school, and then they went away to college, and everybody moved to Calabasas or Alhambra or someplace like that. The church is mostly Mexicans now, but everybody feels they have to come back here for this special night.”

“Twenty years ago, the parish was mostly Irish and Italians, but it’s mostly Hispanic now,” agreed Father Mike O’Brien from County Carlow. “There are only about 10 or 15 Irish families left.”

The Irish filled the hall, not sixth-generation descendants of forgotten immigrants but men and women with brogues who know the steps to the traditional dances and drop the occasional Gaelic phrase. With them came their American children, some in business suits or green cocktail dresses, some in punk outfits with green miniskirts.

They have not lost the native way with a phrase even as they acclimatized to the San Fernando Valley over 20 or 30 years. An overheard remark: “Scarce as kittens in Topanga Canyon.”

The Galway Blazers played “The Leaving of Liverpool,” a mournful emigrant’s farewell as bartenders served up Harp beer for $1.50. Soda bread thick with raisins was two slices for $1.

The green, white and orange flag of the Irish Republic hung near a poster advertising a speech in Beverly Hills today by Ben Briscoe, lord mayor of Dublin.

The band alternated skillfully between traditional Irish tunes and American country music, segueing from “Wild Colonial Boy” to “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

The St. Ambrose Ceilidh Dance Group, two men and four women, stepped energetically through “The Fairy Reel,” purple cloaks flying. “Purple is actually the traditional Irish color, even though everyone thinks it’s green,” said the leader, Margaret Cleary, who said she was “London-Irish born.”

“It’s great aerobic exercise, with all the huffing and puffing,” said Tommy Kiernan of North Hollywood, a Dublin-born plumbing contractor who came to the United States 30 years ago.

“Father Mike, how do we turn down the lights for the piper?” someone asked.

The piper, Ian Rawlinson of North Hollywood, in full kilt and bonnet, paced the length of the hall, keening “Atholl and Bredalbane.” He marched with the grave, disciplined solemnity common to all good pipers, but rare in other 10-year-old boys.

Some talked about the recent surge of illegal Irish immigrants to the United States, the so-called “new Irish,” fleeing Ireland’s bogged-down economy. Estimated to number from 50,000 to 150,000, most live in Boston and New York, but some have showed up in the Los Angeles area.

In response to increasing Irish and Irish-American agitation for something like the amnesty that benefited many Hispanics, they are eligible to apply for 20,000 special “Berman visas,” named for Rep. Howard L. Berman, the Democratic congressman who represents much of North Hollywood and Sun Valley. The visas are offered in a lottery, beginning this month, to illegals from countries--like Ireland--that have not supplied large numbers of immigrants in recent generations.

There are 161 other nationalities eligible, but Irish groups lobbied the hardest for the lottery and made the most extensive preparations for it.

Many said they knew, or at least had met, a few of “the lads,” as they often call the illegals (though many of them are women).

The attitude was mixed. “They’re just trying to do what our parents or grandparents did,” said a well-dressed, middle-aged man.

“Don’t you dare print my name, but I’m not in favor of them at all,” said a successful businessman. “I came here 32 years ago, legally, and I think they should come legally too. We Irish that live here legally don’t owe them one damn thing is how I think.”

“There’s none of them here tonight, though,” said one organizer of the party. “This is a family crowd, and the lads are probably in the pubs down in Santa Monica.”

He missed at least one.

Siobhan--not exactly her real name--lives in the West Valley with her father, a construction worker with a physique like a barrel of concrete and a grip strong enough to dent anvils.

She came from Cork on a tourist visa four years ago and never went home. A petite, China-doll brunette in her mid-30s, she French inhaled a cigarette and talked reluctantly, edgy to the point of flight.

“I’ve never broken another law in my life. I’ve never even had a traffic ticket,” she said. “I’ve got the paper work started for the lottery, but I don’t know how hard it will be to get a visa that way.”

Unlike the mass of the “new Irish,” she doesn’t work for fear of being caught. “I’m afraid to try,” she said.

“I just know I don’t want to have to go back to Ireland.”