Guest meself wrote.

"Is anyone else surprised to see the saying, "make hay while the sun shines", described as "Irish"? Comment, explanation?"

That has niggled me while I was reading the thread through so I googled the phrase and came up with this.

MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES -- "Act while conditions are favorable. The grass that is going to be used as hay needs to be dried after it is cut: rain is likely to spoil it. The farmer, therefore, sought to cut hay on a day when it seemed likely that the sun would be around for that day and one or two more. John Heywood listed the advice as proverbial in 1546: 'When the sunne shyneth make hey.'"

John Heywood was a writer born in Coventry in 1497 and he published a collection of proverbs in 1562. That suggests to me the saying is English in Origin, not Irish.

Correct me if I am wrong but would not Ireland still have been largely Gaelic speaking in the mid 16th century? If that's the case it seems to me unlikely that a proverb of this nature, in English, would have come out of Ireland, though doubtless there were Gaelic equivalents. I suspect it is more likely that the saying was carried from England to Ireland at a much later date.