Abi Kamalei / Submitted photoA reveler at Montserrat’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration. The island is the only place outside Ireland that celebrates the day as an official holiday.

MONTSERRAT, West Indies — Sandy O’Connor is roaming the streets dressed like a French maid — and a risque one at that, with a bit of cleavage showing and a lacy garter encircling her thigh. Every year for the past 33 years, O’Connor, from Gardiner, New York, has been part of a group that celebrates St. Patrick’s Day with a vengeance.

Over the years, the friends have worn their green in Boston; Chicago; Savannah, Georgia, and other places where the Irish national holiday is held dear. O’Connor’s late husband, Bob, was one of the most enthusiastic of the celebrants. After his death in 2003, Sandy continued the tradition, taking his ashes in a coffee mug and scattering some in each of the cities.

This year she and her friends are on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, and so is Bob — well, at least in spirit. She holds out the well-traveled mug.

“There aren’t any more ashes left, but there’s lots of rum,” she says. “Bob would love it.”

Montserrat, a 15-minute flight or a 90-minute ferry ride from Antigua, is known as the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean, and I was here to experience it firsthand during the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

Although Montserrat is the only nation outside of Ireland that celebrates St. Paddy’s as a national holiday, the wearing of the green comes with a touch of Caribbean swagger. There are the requisite shamrocks and shillelaghs, but there are also a lot of sequins and spangles.

You might see a jig or two, but you’ll certainly see soca dancing to the island’s signature music, an offshoot of calypso (Montserrat is the birthplace of Alphonsus Cassell, writer of the soca hit “Hot, Hot, Hot.”)

How, you might wonder, in a sea dotted with islands colonized by the British, French, Spanish and Dutch, did the Irish manage to gain a toehold, albeit on an island only 10 miles long and 7 miles wide?

During the English Civil War in the 17th century, Irish Catholics were persecuted under Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans and shipped to British islands in the Caribbean as indentured servants.

Once they had served their time on Jamaica, Antigua or Barbados, they flocked to Montserrat, which had been offered by its Irish-born governor as a safe haven. Over the years, a strong Hibernian culture developed and remained strong until African slaves displaced Irish laborers.

Today, the link is largely ceremonial, although touches remain, such as a soft Irish lilt to the local patois and the harp and female figure on the island’s flag and official seal.

While the day is given over to St. Patrick, it also honors an unsuccessful slave revolt which took place in the Montserratian town of St. Patrick on March 17, 1768.

Hence, cultural ethos meets historic event, with a twist of carnival jocularity.

While St. Patrick’s Day festivities can attract more revelers than the island can easily handle — it has only one hotel, a handful of guesthouses and B&Bs, and a collection of villas for rent — it’s a bastion of serenity the rest of the year.

Its north side (more about the south later) is lush, green and mountainous, with only one real tourist beach — more Dominica than the Dominican Republic — and that is its charm.

Uncrowded, unhurried and undeveloped in terms of social life, fine dining and myriad activities, Montserrat is for those seeking an off-the-beaten track destination with off-beat delights.

Its national dish is goat water, a thick goat meat stew, which, frankly, I wasn’t eager to try.

Its national pastime is cricket, which, frankly, I compare to watching paint dry.

One of its environmental causes is the plight of the giant ditch frog, known on the island as a mountain chicken, which, frankly, doesn’t have the emotional impact of dwindling polar bear or tiger populations.

Still, sitting on my villa’s veranda in the morning and watching the sun rise over the island of Nevis in the distance, and watching again as the moon rose behind it in the evening, I found myself falling in love with Montserrat.

I fell in love with the people — the friendliest I’ve yet to encounter in the Caribbean — and I loved the feeling of having nothing special to do and no place special to go, taking each day as it came.

Someone else who fell in love with the island was Sir George Martin, the former manager of the Beatles, who died in March at age 94.

Martin came here in the 1960s and found such a peaceful haven, he opened an outpost of his London recording enterprise, Air Studio, here. It may have been peaceful when he first came, but soon the likes of Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Sting, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder began flocking here to record their albums and hang out with Martin at his home, Olveston House.

Air Studio is long gone, but Olveston House, an unassuming, typical Caribbean manor, is now a guesthouse and restaurant. I went one night for dinner and enjoyed roaming the house (admiring photos taken by Linda McCartney) and the grounds (imagining Mick and Sting lolling by the pool in their Speedos).

Pompeii of the Caribbean

Montserrat has not been without its share of natural disasters. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo pummeled the island, damaging more than 90 percent of its structures.

That was just a prelude, however, to what happened on July 18, 1995, when Soufriere Hills Volcano on the southern coast, which had been dormant for 400 years, suddenly started bubbling. Over the next few years, continuous activity led to the evacuation of the south coast.

At 3 a.m. Dec. 26, 1997, the volcano finally blew its top. In less than one minute, 2.3 billion cubic feet of pyroclastic flow — fast-moving currents of hot gas and rock — burst from the dome and buried the capital, Plymouth, in ash.

By 2000, two-thirds of Montserrat’s population had fled.

Today, a visit to the Exclusion Zone, the Pompeii of the Caribbean as it’s known, is a must. The once stately Georgian buildings are in various stages of disintegration — some partially buried beneath the ash and some burned out, leaving only a shell.

Visitors are not permitted to wander on their own; they must get a permit and be accompanied by a guide who knows the area (booking a guide before arriving on island is recommended, as the number of visitors is limited).

It’s also possible to go up to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory for a tour and to see the informative film. From the MVO’s observation deck, visitors get a panoramic view of the volcano, which continues to percolate.

“There’s still magma inside the volcano trying to get out,” observatory director Rod Stewart told me, adding that “there’s a 20 percent probability something will happen over the next year.”

I started to wonder if I should cut my tour short, but as Stewart seemed pretty sanguine about the whole thing, I decided not to worry.

While the Exclusion Zone has a lunar landscape, the rest of the island resembles the Emerald Isle with tropical foliage. Head to Jack Boy Hill for the scenic overlook; Little Bay, whose sheltered cove and lovely beach is pure postcard-Caribbean; and the botanical garden, located on the site of a former sugar plantation.

But mostly, just revel in the slow pace of life on a laid-back island of gentle waves, gentle breezes and gentle people.