When Susan and Eamon McGahey married in 1988, she gave her Irish-born husband a Claddagh ring as his wedding band. Back then, if your finger sported the distinctive hands clasping a heart topped by a crown, you most likely had some sort of connection to the Emerald Isle.

But not anymore. The Claddagh ring -- which represents love (heart), faith in friendship (hands) and loyalty (crown) -- has exploded into the mainstream."Now, it's almost across the board. Everybody wears them," says McGahey, owner of the Harp 'n Shamrock Irish Gift Shop in Wyckoff, who saw the first buds of this trend about 15 years ago, when she had a shop in Clifton. "A lot of other ethnic groups will question what it means, and when you explain, most people do understand the symbolism, and it's important to them. It's used as a friendship ring now, not used that commonly as a wedding band."

In his book "The Claddagh Ring: Ireland's Cherished Symbol of Friendship, Loyalty and Love," actor-author Malachy McCourt points out that the "rapper community" is the latest group to embrace the distinctive ring that even has its own motto: "Let Love and Friendship Reign."

The Claddagh (pronounced CLAD-uh) design -- found today on all sorts of jewelry and merchandise from vases to door knockers to soaps -- takes its name from the quaintly eccentric, once fiercely independent (it even had its own king) fishing village of Claddagh, outside Galway City in the west of Ireland. Fleetingly referred to in the song "Galway Bay," Claddagh has virtually vanished, but its memory is alive thanks to the ring that locals exchanged at weddings and passed from generation to generation.

McCourt, whose brother Frank McCourt wrote "Angela's Ashes," remembers unusual tales about the Claddagh folk from his childhood in Limerick.

"They were a strange breed of people who fished and had affairs with mermaids and things like that," says McCourt, who gave a Claddagh ring to his wife of 41 years on their wedding day.

He attributes the ring's explosive popularity to "Riverdance" and the booming Irish economy.

The genealogy craze also may have something to do with it, says Jonathan Margetts, who owns Thomas Dillon's in Galway, the city's original maker of the Claddagh ring.

"People are looking for any kind of connection to Ireland -- even if it's their great-grandmother's dog was Irish," Mar-getts says with a laugh.

Dillon's, established in 1750, is also home to the Claddagh Museum, which exhibits some of the oldest surviving Claddagh rings -- sadly, many were melted down, after the starving pawned them during the potato famine -- and includes one Claddagh ring so minuscule ("about 2/8 of an inch across and mounted on the head of a pin") visitors view it with a magnifying glass.

There are actually two versions of how the design originated.

First, there is Richard Joyce, also known as Richard "Joyes," a Galway native who was on his way to the West Indies in 1675 when his ship was captured by pirates. For almost 15 years, he was enslaved in Algeria, where the successful Turkish goldsmith who'd bought him taught Joyce his craft.

Eventually freed, Joyce returned to Galway and became one of Ireland's most renowned goldsmiths. The heart-hand-and-crown rings he produced, bearing his initials and marks, are the oldest known Claddagh rings in existence.

The more fanciful tale is of Margaret Joyce, who became known as "Margaret of the Bridges." In 16th-century Galway, she met and married a rich Spanish merchant, but soon after taking her to Spain he died, leaving Margaret very wealthy.

The widow returned to Ireland and remarried in 1596, to the mayor of Galway, who often left Margaret alone. She busied herself having stone bridges built to connect flooded areas all over Galway's Connemara region.

According to legend, while she was sitting at one of those bridges, a large eagle dropped a gift from God into her lap -- the golden prototype for the Claddagh ring -- as reward for her good works.

Today, how the ring is worn is also symbolic. Worn on the left hand, crown pointing outward, it indicates the heart is forever promised. Worn on the right hand, heart pointing to the fingernail, means someone is unattached; the reverse way, the heart is taken for the moment.

"It's such an expressive piece of jewelry," McCourt says. "There's hardly anything like it. It encompasses everything romantic in our lives and the most basic thing that we all seek -- and that is love."

E-mail: rohan@northjersey.com