And will ye be drownin’the shamrock as well? For ’tis St Patrick’s Day, one of the most widely celebrated national and religious feasts in the world.
St Patrick's day is celebrated around the world, but you won't be finding the Irish in their native land drinking green-coloured beer, wearing enormous shamrocks, or dressing in green from head to toe. They might be marching in a parade, having a night out, or taking the opportunity to get away for a long weekend.
Elsewhere, however, this is the day of days for those with even the slightest claim to Irish blood (and even for some of those without), a day when all can revel in the pride of association with that remarkable race of people which has contributed so much to world culture.
Celebration of this saint’s day reaches its highest fervour in several parts of the United States, where St Patrick’s Day
parades havelong been a part of the multicultural calendar. Irish immigrants made up a large segment of American society by the nineteenth century, particularly after
An Gorta Mor, the disastrous Irish potato famine of 1845 - 47, during which time emigration and death reduced the population of the small island by two million souls. Even during the preceding century, the homesick Irish naturally gathered in their adopted countries, such as America and Australia, on the day of their national patron saint to celebrate their Irishness.
Today the annual St Patrick’s Day parade in New York draws hundreds of thousands of participants and spectators. Dating back to 1762, this event is a parade of international fame and significance, in which Irish-Americans and Irish “ wannabes”let their hair down. The parade in Boston reaches back even further in time, having first been celebrated in 1737.
America’s oldest Irish society, the Hibernian Society, was founded in 1812 in Savannah, Georgia. The next year they held their first private procession, the forerunner of Savannah’s famous annual St Patrick’s Day parade. In Savannah, as in other parts of the States, you can close your eyes and hold your nose to partake in some of the ubiquitous green-dyed beer and green donuts.
Who
was Patrick?
Saint Patrick was an historical character who was born in an unknown place called
Bannavem, probably in England or South Wales, about 389 CE. His father,
Calpurnius, was a Roman official and deacon of the Christian Church.
At the age of 16, Patrick was captured by Celtic raiders and spent six years as a slave swineherd on an Irish farm, where he learned the Irish language, until he escaped to Europe. There he studied theology and was sent by Pope
Celestine I back to Ireland to teach the natives about Christianity.
Landing at Wicklow in 432, he soon established religious communities and churches, despite the relentless opposition of the established religion of the pagan Druids - a religion that in succeeding centuries was fiercely suppressed.
Showing great courage, Patrick even preached the Gospel to the High King of Tara, and eventually the faith which he had brought to the Emerald Isle won over almost completely, as is evidenced even today. (Of course, there were many other Christian proselytisers who did the work besides Patrick, as well as many potentates and preachers who felt it their duty to destroy the indigenous religions.)
Patrick’s life story, as it has been passed down over the centuries, is delightfully replete with miraculous events and adventures. As every schoolchild knows, it was he who was responsible for the fact that there are no snakes or similar vermin in Ireland even yet.
Several versions exist to tell how he performed this miracle. One relates how the good saint beat a drum whenever he entered a town. On one occasion, he beat his drum on Mount Croagh Patrick (later named after him, in County Mayo), and, proclaiming his intention to rid Ireland of snakes, beat the drum so hard as to punch a hole in it. When simultaneously a huge black serpent appeared, the locals thought Patrick’s faith was insufficient for the task. Suddenly, however, an angel of the Lord appeared and mended his drum, and as Patrick beat his instrument the snakes vanished from the land.
A charming addendum to this legend is the tale that one old serpent resisted the banishment, so the saint made a box and ordered the snake into it. Naturally, the serpent objected, saying it was too small for him, but St Patrick insisted that it wasn’t.
To prove that the box was too small, the snake slithered in: Patrick slammed the lid down and threw the box and its miserable contents into the sea.
The belief in the anti-serpentine nature of Irish soil was so widespread that when, in the early nineteenth century, Sydney’s famous mansion, Vaucluse
House (home of William Charles
Wentworth), was built, soil from Ireland was imported and spread around the fence line to keep out snakes. In 1831, to test the veracity of the superstition, Mr James Cleland, an Irishman, brought six snakes from England to Ireland, and let them loose in his garden at Rath-gael. A few days later, one of the local bumpkins, thinking he had found an eel, took one of the snakes to Dr JL Drummond, a celebrated naturalist. Near-panic broke out when Drummond reported the find of a snake on Irish soil. Sermons were even preached that this was a sign of the imminent second coming of Christ.
The nineteenth century English folklorist,
Robert Chambers*, related a quaint tale concerning St Patrick and the serpents. "In the Galtie or Gaultie Mountains, situated between the counties of Cork and Tipperary, there are seven lakes, in one of which, called Lough Dilveen, it is said Saint Patrick, when banishing the snakes and toads from Ireland, chained a monster serpent, telling him to remain there till Monday. The serpent every Monday morning calls out in Irish, ‘It is a long Monday, Patrick.’ This is firmly believed by the lower orders who live in the neighbourhood of the Lough."
Once, when baptising a pagan chieftain, St Patrick leaned on his bishop’s crosier, or crook, accidentally sticking the end of the staff in the chief’s foot. The chief, thinking this must be a usual part of the ceremony, put up with the pain in silence, and the blood flowed freely. The place where this happened is called Struthfhuil (stream of blood), pronounced Struill, a place in Downpatrick (named, appropriately, after the place where Patrick died, aged 120). A large number of places in Ireland and Britain similarly derive their names from events in the saint’s life: Kilpatrick (cell of Patrick), Portpatrick, Kirkpatrick, Patterdale, and Innis-patrick are examples.
St Patrick is said to have shown the Irish people how to brew their favourite drink of
poteen, and the beverage’s name is said to be derived from that of the saint. Another tradition says that when Patrick arrived at Wicklow he set about immediately to convert the pagans. To help illustrate the concept of the Divine Trinity to the heathen tribesmen, he bent down and picked up a shamrock, using its three leaves as an example of the three-in-one God. It is interesting to note that the Druids before him had used shamrock as a therapeutic herb – perhaps the mystical significance of this plant was part of the Irish genetic memory long before the introduction of Christianity. Patrick’s antipathy to the nature-religion of the Druids caused him to curse the sect; their lands became infertile and finally swallowed them up.
In another quaint tale, Patrick and his followers found themselves one cold morning on a mountainside, without a fire to cook their breakfast or to warm them. St Patrick, despite the protestations of his companions, asked them to gather snowballs. After they had done so, he breathed on the pile of snow and ice, and it turned into a roaring fire. A balladeer later wrote:
Saint Patrick, as in legends told, The morning being very cold, In order to assuage the weather, Collected bits of ice together; Then gently breathed upon the pyre, When every fragment blazed on fire. Oh! if the saint had been so kind, As to have left the gift behind To such a lovelorn wretch as me, Who daily struggles to be free; I'd be content – content with part, I'd only ask to thaw the heart, The frozen heart, of Polly Roe.
Patrick's jawbone was a relic that was kept and said to help women in childbirth. As well, accused people could place their hand on it and would be struck down by God if they gave false evidence. Rather than being kept in a grand cathedral, in keeping with the saint’s humble origins the relic was in the possession of a humble family near Belfast where it also cured epilepsy, and protected against witches and the evil eye.
St Patrick’s day has entered the public consciousness in many ways. The Pennsylvanian Dutch folk used to say “ Won do en feerbletterich glay blawd finnischt uff deer St Patrick’s Dawg, no husht do glick”, meaning, “ When you find a four-leafed clover on St Patrick’s day, you’ll be lucky”. They also had a saying that one should never kill a snake on the saint’s day. An old piece of Maryland folklore says that to make cabbage-seed grow, the farmer should first sow it in his nightclothes on March 17 – apparently a relic of sympathetic magic invoking sexual-horticultural connections.
In Ireland itself, farmers traditionally recalled that they should begin planting potatoes on St Patrick’s Day. It must be born in mind that March 17 is approximately the time of the Spring Equinox (Northern Hemisphere), and it is probably due to the ancient association with this astronomical and seasonal event that the day has such significance, as so many of our festivals similarly hearken back to Nature rites from time immemorial.
In more recent times in Ireland, St Patrick's Day was seen as a legitimate occasion on which the predominantly Roman Catholic population could break their Lenten
(pre-Easter) fast. Consequently, it was a great day of eating, drinking and being merry. Over the years, as observance of religious fasting has declined in Ireland as in most of the Western world, the importance of the non-fasting day has also diminished, quite naturally, so St Pat's has lost some of its celebratory intensity in its home country.
These days, in America and Australia (where it is said forty per cent of the populace have Irish ancestry to some degree), St Paddy’s Day bring out the Irish in many of us, and it is fun to see how many people remember to “wear the green”, have a drop of Irish coffee, or “wet (or drown) the shamrock”, that is, drink their fill in honour of this remarkable saint of old Ireland.
So the message is, have a grand St Patrick’s Day, and spare a thought for the ancient folk traditions that come with it.
St
Patrick, having “driven the frogs out of the bogs,” was walking along
the shores of Lough Neagh, when he was accosted by St Bridget in tears,
and was told that a mutiny had broken out in the nunnery over which she
presided, the ladies claiming the right of “popping the question” [See
February 29,
Leap Year customs].
St
Patrick said he would concede them the right every seventh year, when St Bridget
threw her arms round his neck, and exclaimed, “Arrah, Pathrick,
jewel, I daurn't go back to the girls wid such a proposal. Make it one
year in four.” St Patrick replied, “Bridget, acushla, squeeze me that
way again, an' I'll give ye leap-year, the longest of the lot.” St
Bridget, upon this, popped the question to St Patrick himself, who, of
course, could not marry: so he patched up the difficulty as best he could
with a kiss and a silk gown. Ivor
H Evans, Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
June 1
| The
pilgrimage to St Patrick's Purgatory began
The story is told that St Patrick
preached to the Irish about many things, including Purgatory. The
inhabitants, however, said that they would not believe in what he told them
unless they saw for themselves, whereupon St Patrick miraculously caused the
earth to open and reveal the flaming entrance of the place of punishment.
Thus the pagans were converted to Christianity.
The place where this happened is Station Island, Lough
Derg, and the earliest recorded pilgrimage to this place was made in
1358, recorded in a testimonial letter by King Edward
III, as evidence of
Ungaruus of Rimini and Nicholas of Beccaria having made the pilgrimage. The
island where the custom took place measures no more than 300 paces in any
direction. In the time of Robert Chambers (19th-century English
folklorist) the pilgrimage was still being conducted, starting on June 1 and
continuing till August
15. In 1623 the annual event had gathered such an air of licentiousness
that the Lord Justices commanded that all the buildings on the island of
Lough Derg be demolished.
The word
‘Purgatory’ was done away with, but the chapel remained with the name
‘the prison’. The pilgrims, termed ‘stationers’ entered ‘prison’
at 7 pm, women on one side and men on the other. There they remained for 24
hours without food or sleep; repeating prayers for penance, they crawled and
went barefooted.
They believed that
if anyone fell asleep, the Devil would take off the whole party of
penitents. It was said to have happened twice already and must happen a
third time, so the women took pins to wake anybody up.
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This famous drink, suitable for St Paddy’s Day, was invented in 1953 at the bar at Shannon Airport in Western Ireland. Modern urban legend has it that a barman, coming to work on St Patrick’s day after a few drinks, poured a nip of Irish whisky into his coffee to help his hangover. Liking the drop, he tried it out on his customers, with success, and the success kept on succeeding.
To make a good Irish coffee, pour a good nip of Irish whisky into a cup of quality percolated or drip-filtered coffee. Add a teaspoon of brown sugar to taste, and top with a frothy head of cream which has been whipped to a firm but not buttery consistency. Enjoy while you drown the shamrock!
