July 10, 1996 Just because you're an internationally recognized rock star doesn't mean you can't lead a partially unobserved life.

Just ask Dolores O'Riordan, the 93-pound powerhouse pixie behind Irish supergroup The Cranberries, who has been secretly spending the last week at a cottage in the middle of the forest just outside Peterborough.

"I'm pretty much able to travel. I kind of do the baseball cap trick, no makeup, looking like a 12-year-old boy, and it works," says O'Riordan, 24. She was on the phone yesterday prior to the band's tour resuming later this month, including an Aug. 29 date at the Molson Amphitheatre.

"The scummier you look, the better. Don't dress like a rock star and you're fine. Forget the shades, baby."

The cottage in question belongs to O'Riordan and Don Burton, her Toronto-born husband of two years. They met when Burton was Duran Duran's tour manager in 1993 and The Cranberries, who have since sold 23 million records worldwide, were the backup band.

And while O'Riordan loves the great Canadian outdoors -- "We never get snow in Ireland," she comments -- she'll admit there are some cultural differences that have taken some getting used to.

"When I first married my husband and I go to the family house, 12 o'clock in the day, and they'd be like, 'Would you like a beer?' And I'd look at them going, 'Why?'

"In Ireland, if you have one beer you keep drinking for the whole day until you can't remember what happened. But here people drink socially. We don't drink to have a drink; we drink to get plowed in Ireland."

O'Riordan's sunny disposition may have to do with the fact that the band's third album, To The Faithful Departed, has already sold a staggering three and a half million worldwide since it's May release, even though it hasn't received the same kind of critical acclaim as 1994's sophomore effort, No Need To Argue. That album has sold five million in the U.S. alone, and remains on the Billboard 200 after 90 weeks.

"The album's doing amazingly," O'Riordan says. "My life's doing amazingly. I'm a very happy woman. I've got an amazing husband. I've got a wonderful family who've dealt amazingly with the whole change in my life. And I count myself very blessed and lucky."

Her upbeat nature also belies the fact that she blew her knee out one month ago when an old skiing injury flared up during a performance in Australia, forcing the cancellation of nine shows in Southeast Asia.

"I was on stage and I was pumped on the old adrenaline," she remembers. "I did one of those major jumps in the middle of a song and it (the artificial ligament) gave way too much. It was a case of resting it and working the muscles, and my physiotherapist was suggesting wearing a splint on stage. It wouldn't look too cool," she laughs.

As it was, the extent of the injury only became apparent the next day, when O' Riordan's knee was "a balloon, huge and all blue." And even then, she still performed the next night.

"Every time I tried to dance or run across the stage, I was doing the old Long John Silver on it and I felt like an idiot, to put it mildly."

The good news is her leg's feeling better now after plenty of rest and physiotherapy, although the cancellations inititally made O'Riordan worry about what people might say.

Especially in Toronto, given The Cranberries' history of cancellations here -- they postponed their show four times in 1994 before finally making it to T.O.

"Of course, if it was any other country I wouldn't take as much notice," she says. "But when you're married to a Canadian you take more notice when you kind of live here sometimes."