Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Happy Saint Paddy's day...

Today is the day when millions of Irish people and Americans who are Irish when it suits them celebrate St. Patrick the patron saint of Ireland. In Chicago they even dye the river green in homage to the "old country" (see picture below!)


When I used to work in the USA I came across quite a few people who felt the need to rub my nose in their Irishness, usually via sneering references to the historical domination and abuse of the Irish by the English, a fair point I suppose, but little to do with me as my most recent ancestors came from either Ireland or Scotland, a fact which I seldom bothered to enlighten them with. It's amazing how emigration seems to concentrate and focus an inflated sense of self-righteousness in some people, a rose tinted view of history perhaps.

I never had such issues in Ireland itself of course, I worked over there for some years too without the subject ever arising, I fondly remember one particular March 17th working in Belfast, all I can say is that after a liquid lunch of epic proportions things became somewhat of a blur; those guys were always keen to be as inclusive to foreigners as they could be. The day became somewhat legendary as one member of our team (a colourful character whose name was also Patrick) disappeared on his way home back home to Dublin for the weekend, we didn't see or hear from him for 4 months, then to all our amazement he just turned up one Monday morning at the office asking for his old job back. He was always slightly tight lipped about what happened that day but after a few "Black Russians" one evening in the pub he did let it slip that on the train he got talking to a rather attractive woman and in his words "one thing led to another" and that was all he ever said! ... ah the Irish.


Talking of legends, I should really get to the point of this post, as you will know Saint Patrick is famous for driving all the snakes out of Ireland, a feat he supposedly accomplished with a wave of his staff from the top of a hill at which point all the squamates upped and left via the Irish sea. Clearly this story has more to do with the symbolic banishment of pagan religions from Ireland than actual fact but then again when has religion let the facts get in the way of a good story! :) The actual reason for there being no snakes in Ireland is simply a tale of evolution and geography, assisted by the recency of the last ice age. Snakes never made it across the open sea and are still absent to this day; however, the more keen eyed observers among you will notice that the above picture is not in fact a snake but a slow worm which is a species of legless lizard and quite at home in the Emerald Isle, I guess the moral of the story is that not all the snakes in Ireland are what they first seem.

6 comments:

Gerrarrdus said...

OK, go on then Steve! Is there one piece of genuine hard evidence that the story is a sublimation of the repression of paganism? If it were wouldn't we have similar stories explaining that St David drove all the panthers out of Wales or something?
Isn't it more likely just a "just-so" story as to why they don't have any snakes?
There's a million "pagan origin" stories in these islands and as far as I can tell 99.9% of them are totally made up!

Of course, if you do have any evidence I'll give you this one.

cheers

Gary

Steve Borthwick said...

Hi G,

Well, I'm not a historian but from what I read (here) it seems that he did have quite a few run-in's with the locals (ref. St. Patrick's "Confessio") in it he says that he was taken prisoner by "Druids" on twelve occasions, the symbol of the Druids in Ireland at that time was a snake, surprising since there were none?

Sure, this may be a coincidence but the connection is more likely IMO than the alternative that he performed a miracle (there is certainly no evidence for that!)

Gerrarrdus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gerrarrdus said...

Oh he probably had a few run-ins with pagans. Where did you get that stuff about the symbol of the Druids being a snake? (Maybe it was a slow-worm?)
And how did we come to the situation where are you quoting catholicrevelations.com as evidence to me? That's really worrying...


Reposted with spelling corrected!

Steve Borthwick said...

G, LOL, re. catholicrevelations, I know, the things I read!

Symbols involving snakes were used by druids, particularly in Gaul; you can see it on some of their coins.

Also, you'd think that the people in Ireland would know there were no (real) snakes for Patrick to actually drive out, i.e. that the myth is supposed to be a metaphor? (apparently the slow worms were introduced more recently ;)

Gerrarrdus said...

But the theory was that the story of driving the snakes out was about paganism being conquered?

So how would you mythologise that story paganism being driven out) into a fable about an animal the Irish had never even seen being driven out? Why not just say "St Patrick drove paganism out of Ireland"?

Generally speaking any "pagan" origin to almost anything turns out to be a pile of fetid dingo's kidneys on close examination, and I guess this is one of them?