tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/saint-patricks-day-36874/articlesSaint Patrick's Day – The Conversation2022-03-15T14:33:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1746832022-03-15T14:33:02Z2022-03-15T14:33:02ZSt. Patrick’s Day: How Irish-born writers contributed to Canadian and Irish histories<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451749/original/file-20220313-19-egxxdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C144%2C5970%2C3620&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The critical reappraisal of Irish and Canadian cultural relations and influences, as well as Irish encounters with Indigenous Peoples, is of current and urgent interest to both Irish and Canadian scholars.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/st--patrick-s-day--how-irish-born-writers-contributed-to-canadian-and-irish-histories" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>For the <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/history-ethnic-cultural/Pages/irish.aspx">four million Canadians who have Irish ancestry</a>, St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is a time to not only celebrate but reflect on how their perception of Irish culture has shaped their identity and lives. </p>
<p>In my book, <em><a href="https://www.mqup.ca/canada-to-ireland-products-9780228008378.php">Canada to Ireland: Poetry, Politics, and the Shaping of Canadian Nationalism, 1788–1900</a></em>, I examine how Irish-born writers’ historical and literary works shaped narratives and early English-language settler folklore about Canadian identity or life in Canada. </p>
<p>In these years, Irish writers played an important role in transatlantic cultural conversations among British, French and Indigenous nations that influenced Canadian nationalism. Irish migrants and visitors to Canada also affected Irish nationalism through their literary works.</p>
<h2>Critical reappraisal</h2>
<p>The critical reappraisal of Irish and Canadian cultural relations and influences, as well as <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/irish-and-scottish-encounters-with-indigenous-peoples-products-9780773541511.php">Irish encounters with Indigenous Peoples</a> is of current and urgent interest to <a href="https://www.ucd.ie/englishdramafilm/filestore/Conference%20Schedule%20Untold%20Stories%20of%20the%20Past%20150%20Years%20FINAL%20VERSION-1.pdf">both Irish and Canadian scholars</a>. </p>
<p>Some Irish Canadians may remember learning in school about Irish-born Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825-68), the politician who <a href="https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/irish-studies/foundation.html">lobbied for protection for the French and Irish</a> — but much less about Irish Canadians like <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/davin_nicholas_flood_13E.html">Nicholas Flood Davin</a> whose <a href="http://rschools.nan.on.ca/article/the-davin-report-1879-1120.asp">1879 report on assimilative industrial schooling</a> for Indigenous Peoples contributed to developing the Indian Residential School System.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indian-residential-schools-what-does-it-mean-if-the-pope-apologizes-in-canada-170984">Indian Residential Schools: What does it mean if the Pope apologizes in Canada?</a>
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<p>St. Patrick’s Day folklore in North America often involves nostalgia for simpler times and may <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2014/09/07/book_excerpt_toronto_a_city_of_orange_and_green.html">involve recollected</a> <a href="https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis">cultural and historical wounds</a>. </p>
<p>In this context, and also in the context of the ongoing Indigenous community calls for settlers to be accountable for addressing the harmful legacies of colonialism, it’s relevant to remember, as historian Donald Harmon Akenson notes, that “<a href="https://www.mqup.ca/irish-and-scottish-encounters-with-indigenous-peoples-products-9780773541511.php">Irish … settlers and their beneficiaries participated in a system that destroyed or maimed [Indigenous] communities and cultures</a> on a global scale.” </p>
<p>Some Irish-born writers <a href="https://commons.und.edu/settler-literature/144/">who settled in Canada</a> advocated working with the British in order to gain protections for migrating Irish minorities, or used their storytelling skills to provide solace in ways that advanced settler colonial folklore of being attached to the land.</p>
<p>Other Irish-born writers <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Douglas-Hyde">who visited Canada</a> and encountered Indigenous Peoples returned to Ireland resolute in defending Irish political autonomy and the Irish language against British colonial rule.</p>
<p>Here are five Irish-born 18th- and 19th-century writers to consider. </p>
<h2>Edward Fitzgerald</h2>
<p>Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763-98) is most known as a leading conspirator in the revolutionary <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Society-of-United-Irishmen">Society of United Irishmen</a>, who planned to overthrow the British in Ireland. His death in a Dublin prison in 1798 after leading the failed rebellion ensured, as historian Daniel Gahan notes, Fitzgerald’s status in Ireland as a “<a href="https://af.booksc.eu/book/26587306/7fa131">toweringly romantic figure in Irish history</a>.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451748/original/file-20220313-28-1duc60c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451748/original/file-20220313-28-1duc60c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451748/original/file-20220313-28-1duc60c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451748/original/file-20220313-28-1duc60c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451748/original/file-20220313-28-1duc60c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451748/original/file-20220313-28-1duc60c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451748/original/file-20220313-28-1duc60c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">illustration, ‘The Arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,’ from W.H. Maxwell’s ‘History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798; with Memoirs of the Union and Emmett’s Insurrection in 1803,’ published 1845.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Trustees of the British Museum)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>But as an officer in the British army, Fitzgerald led an intrepid exploratory voyage from Fredericton to Québec City in winter 1789. Fitzgerald’s letters home describe snowshoeing and canoeing as well as the Indigenous communities that guided and fed him — and likely saved his party’s lives when they got lost. His letters also detail his positive impressions of what he saw as the egalitarian nature of both Indigenous and settler societies.</p>
<p>As I have explored, <a href="https://canlit.ca/article/ireland-and-england-will-be-too-little-for-me-the-canadian-letters-of-lord-edward-fitzgerald-in-the-life-and-death-of-lord-edward-fitzgerald/">his descriptions of both snowshoeing and canoeing later popularized</a> in a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=bc.ark:/13960/t0zp4f18k&view=1up&seq=9">biography of his life</a> shaped the literary construction of Canadian national identity in the 19th century, including settler-colonial appropriations of canoeing as a Canadian symbol. </p>
<h2>Thomas Moore</h2>
<p>The Irish patriotic poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-moore">Thomas Moore (1779-1852)</a> — Fitzgerald’s biographer —was already a literary celebrity <a href="https://canadianpoetry.org/volumes/vol24/bentley.html">when he arrived in 1804 in Upper and Lower Canada and Nova Scotia</a> as a tourist. </p>
<p>He had travelled in freight canoes piloted by voyageurs for much of his journey from New York to Nova Scotia in 1804 and stopped to visit Niagara Falls and Quebéc City. The lyrics and music for his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXcBQgfms3c">“Canadian Boat Song”</a> were inspired by the French-Canadian folk ballads that helped the crew keep time and ease their paddling labour. The song would become a popular North American ballad in the 19th century. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4cZAVtRlrkc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The National Capital Suzuki School of Music performs ‘Canadian Boat Song.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>The simple and evocative lyric also helped Moore discover the emotional impact created by setting patriotic verses in English to Irish traditional tunes.
He put this technique to use in his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Irish-Melodies">Irish Melodies</a>, a group of 130 poems set to music. Some of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhNDz7WX2es">these melodies are still heard</a> or sung at St. Patrick’s Day gatherings today. </p>
<p>After Moore established that the folk ballad tradition could help popularize historical events that would inspire nationalists, the young poets and intellectuals that founded Young Ireland <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/265">continued to do this in their own cultural (and eventually revolutionary) movement</a>.</p>
<h2>Thomas D'Arcy McGee</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/thomas-darcy-mcgee">Thomas D’Arcy McGee</a>, one of Young Ireland’s most gifted poets and historians, fled to North America after the unsuccessful <a href="https://www.historyireland.com/the-rising-of-1848/">Young Ireland rising of 1848</a> when the Irish rebelled against the British in British-occupied and famine-ravaged Ireland. </p>
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<img alt="Statues of emaciated figures seen in front of large slabs of stone in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451740/original/file-20220313-20-1s0jhdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451740/original/file-20220313-20-1s0jhdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451740/original/file-20220313-20-1s0jhdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451740/original/file-20220313-20-1s0jhdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451740/original/file-20220313-20-1s0jhdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451740/original/file-20220313-20-1s0jhdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451740/original/file-20220313-20-1s0jhdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Figures seen at Ireland Park at Toronto’s waterfront memorial that commemorates Irish famine migrants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Sean Marshall/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>In the famine, about <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/irish-potato-famine#:%7E:text=Before%20it%20ended%20in%201852,leave%20their%20homeland%20as%20refugees.">one million Irish died</a> of starvation and related causes. At least one million others fled as refugees. By the 1850s more than <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/irish#:%7E:text=The%20Great%20Famine%20of%20the,prevent%20the%20spread%20of%20disease">500,000 Irish</a> had immigrated to British North America, including <a href="https://www.canadairelandfoundation.com/irelandpark/engraved-names/">more than 38,000 who landed in Toronto in 1847</a>.</p>
<p>In the view that ballads could help settlers know and appreciate their new home’s past, McGee published <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=MqxcAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Canadian Ballads</a> in 1858. The collection celebrated the heroism of northern explorers as well as Indigenous and French Canadian spirituality and
popularized ghost stories. </p>
<p>University of British Columbia <a href="https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/O/On-the-Other-Side-s-of-150">historian Margery Fee has examined McGee and Métis leader Louis Riel</a> to explore parallels and differences between how these figures valued the preservation of culture and distinct identity. </p>
<p>McGee, once an anti-British revolutionary, became a <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/thomas-darcy-mcgee">“Father of Canadian Confederation,” and also advocated for the Irish agreeing to limited self-government</a> in the British Empire. McGee was viewed as a traitor by some Irish and <a href="https://www.historymuseum.ca/history-hall/thomas-darcy-mcgee/">was assassinated on Sparks Street in Ottawa in 1868</a>. </p>
<h2>Charles Dawson Shanly</h2>
<p>Dublin-born <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/shanly_charles_dawson_10E.html">Charles Dawson Shanly</a> continued the tradition of presenting supernatural events as an essential element of early English-language settler Canadian folklore. His eerie ballad, “The Walker of the Snow,” was published in 1859 and anthologized frequently. Combining Irish and Canadian ballad traditions, it narrates a ghost story told in time to the “harp-twang” of snowshoes. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.canfolkmusic.ca/index.php/cfmb/article/viewFile/412/406">This ballad</a> became an early country and western recording when it was recorded by American country singer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTCxT_B0J1A">Billie Maxwell</a> in 1929. Through the late singer <a href="https://seantyrrellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/walker-of-the-snow">Sean Tyrell</a>, it has also become a traditional music standard in Ireland.</p>
<h2>Douglas Hyde</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.irelandcanadamonument.com/irish-gaelic-health-education.html">Douglas Hyde</a>, Irish-language poet and scholar, arrived in Fredericton in 1890 to teach languages <a href="https://unbhistory.lib.unb.ca/Douglas_Hyde">at University of New Brunswick</a>. During the winter, he took part in a Caribou hunt with his guides, some of them members of the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/maliseet">Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet)</a> People.</p>
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<img alt="A man in an academic gown and bushy moustache." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451741/original/file-20220313-25-1oclx9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451741/original/file-20220313-25-1oclx9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451741/original/file-20220313-25-1oclx9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451741/original/file-20220313-25-1oclx9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451741/original/file-20220313-25-1oclx9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451741/original/file-20220313-25-1oclx9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451741/original/file-20220313-25-1oclx9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Douglas Hyde taught at the University of New Brunswick.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
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<p>The hunting party spent their first night in the cabin of an Irish settler, who to Hyde’s delight conversed with him in Irish. Although it was one of the coldest winters on record, his guides ensured Hyde was able to navigate the deep snows in snowshoes and to sleep comfortably outdoors on a bed made of spruce boughs. </p>
<p>At night, Indigenous guides told stories that reminded Hyde of the oral tradition in Ireland, although the guides relayed that stories lost much depth and meaning in translation in English.</p>
<p>In Ireland, Hyde recounted his experience with the Irish settler and the Wolastoqiyik guides in his cultural manifesto, <a href="https://ernie.uva.nl/upload/media/eb201b85e5cb00114d568245a59cc05f.pdf">“The Necessity of De-Anglicizing Ireland.</a>” Here, he argued that the revival of the Irish language was essential if Irish people were to know their own rich culture in all its nuance and complexity. </p>
<p>Hyde helped launch an Irish-language revival of cultural decolonization that Irish nationalists took to its political conclusion when Irish republicans, led by the Irish language teacher and poet Pádraig Pearse, took the first steps towards creating a sovereign nation during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Easter-Rising">Easter Rising of 1916</a>. </p>
<p>Ireland broke its final link with England in 1938, replacing King George V as head of state — with <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/irelands-poet-president-douglas-hyde">Douglas Hyde, the first president</a> (Uachtáran) of Ireland. </p>
<p>In Canada, Hyde had seen Irish settlers and Indigenous communities preserve a distinct element of their cultural identity in their language. A memento of his visit was a photo of him wearing a sealskin hat and carrying snowshoes, which he kept in his study for the rest of his life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174683/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michele Holmgren's book, Ireland to Canada received subvention funding from the FHSS?SHRCC Awards to Scholarly Publications Program. (This was applied for and received by McGill-Queen's University Press).</span></em></p>Irish-born writers from the late 1700s to 1900 who spent time in present-day Canada influenced colonial narratives about Canadian identity or defended Irish linguistic and political autonomy.Michele Holmgren, Associate Professor of Canadian and Irish literature, Department of English, Languages and Cultures, Mount Royal UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1766592022-03-11T14:26:03Z2022-03-11T14:26:03ZSt. Brigid, the compassionate, sensible female patron saint of Ireland, gets a lot less recognition than St. Patrick<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450731/original/file-20220308-11174-tfybbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C95%2C5284%2C3443&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">St. Brigid of Kildare's shrine in Faughart, County Louth, Ireland.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/one-of-irelands-patron-saints-st-brigid-of-kildares-shrine-news-photo/105767364?adppopup=true">(Photo by RDImages/Epics/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 17, the world celebrates the feast day of <a href="https://theconversation.com/10-things-to-know-about-the-real-st-patrick-92253">St. Patrick</a>, a zealous British bishop of the fifth century who became famous for spreading Christianity in Ireland. Patrick is Ireland’s main patron saint. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/bitel-homepage/">medieval historian</a>, I suggest that we also pause to remember another of Ireland’s patron saints, the nurturing, compassionate <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/landscape-with-two-saints-9780195336528?cc=us&lang=en&">St. Brigid</a>. </p>
<p>In 2022, following a three-year campaign by a feminist organization, <a href="https://www.herstory.ie/home">herstory.ie</a>, the Irish government finally acknowledged Brigid’s importance by declaring a new <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/dublin-to-host-st-brigid-s-day-events-celebrating-the-original-brigit-1.4789324#:%7E:text=Drawing%20inspiration%20from%20the%20Celtic,February%201st%2C%20with%20free%20admission.">national holiday</a> on her feast day of Feb. 1. Until then, Ireland counted her among their official three patrons, along with St. Patrick and St. <a href="https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/125140-2-125140">Columcille, or Columba</a>, but gave workers a day off only on St. Patrick’s Day. </p>
<h2>So who is St. Brigid?</h2>
<p>Unlike Patrick, who came from Britain, <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02784b.htm">Brigid was born in Ireland</a>, sometime around A.D. 450, the child of a slave and a king in the province of Leinster. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Brigid left no historical record of her missionary work. Patrick wrote <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english">two letters</a> that still exist: one a defense of his missionary career and the other a rebuke to a slave-raiding British king. All information about Brigid comes from biographies of saints written long after she lived. A churchman named <a href="https://www.dib.ie/biography/cogitosus-a1809">Cogitosus</a> was the <a href="https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Vita_sanctae_Brigitae_(Cogitosus)">first to write</a> about Brigid, in about A.D. 650, or approximately 200 years after her birth. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A stained-glass image of Saint Brigid." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450735/original/file-20220308-17-cbi3o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450735/original/file-20220308-17-cbi3o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450735/original/file-20220308-17-cbi3o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450735/original/file-20220308-17-cbi3o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450735/original/file-20220308-17-cbi3o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450735/original/file-20220308-17-cbi3o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450735/original/file-20220308-17-cbi3o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">St. Brigid of Kildare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/saint-brigid-of-kildare-royalty-free-image/94025718?adppopup=true">junak/ iStock via Getty images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cogitosus recounted Brigid’s many purported miracles: As a girl, she gave away the household’s butter and bacon to hungry beggars and dogs, then miraculously replaced the food for her family. Later in life, she turned a wooden column into a living tree with one touch and hung her cloak on a sunbeam. After she founded her monastic community at <a href="http://kildarelocalhistory.ie/kildare/history-of-kildare-town/st-brigids-cathedral/">Kildare</a> and became its abbess, she also traveled, preached and was said to have cured Christians of serious debilities such as blindness and muteness, all in imitation of Christ. While many early female saints have miracles attributed to them, few of them actively proselytized.</p>
<p>Cogitosus tells us that Brigid worked some other unique marvels. She miraculously ended the unwanted pregnancy of one of her fellow sisters, “causing the foetus to disappear without coming to birth and without pain,” as Cogitosus put it. She tamed both domestic and wild animals, which was handy when her cows went astray. She could also, according to Cogitosus, manipulate the landscape. Once when her kinsmen were building a plank trackway through the bogs, Brigid moved a river to make it easier for them. </p>
<p>Instead of battling wrongdoers, she found peaceful resolutions to violent situations. Once, for example, she deterred a band of bloodthirsty murderers by making it appear as if they had committed a killing that never even happened.</p>
<p>Even after her death, miracles supposedly continued to occur at her shrine. In fact, Brigid’s intervention from beyond the grave helped builders gather materials to build a new and magnificent shrine for her at Kildare, or so wrote Cogitosus. She guided an immovable boulder down a hill to her community for their new millstone. She caused a problematic door to hang correctly. These were minor but useful miracles – typical, I would argue, of the sensible saint.</p>
<h2>Royal patronage for Patrick</h2>
<p>By comparison, Patrick’s <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/more">earliest hagiographers</a>, writing only decades after Cogitosus, depicted their saint in constant conflict with the “heathens” he tried to convert to Christianity. </p>
<p>When Patrick arrived in Ireland in the mid-fifth century, he seems to have bullied Ireland’s most powerful king into baptism, but only after dueling and then miraculously killing the king’s chief druids. In hagiography, druids were the Irish and British version of pagan wizards. After watching the druids perish, King Loegaire Mac Néill decided “It is better to believe than die,” wrote Patrick’s hagiographer, Muirchú around A.D. 700. </p>
<p>Also according to Muirchú, Patrick routinely cursed unbelievers. When one evildoer tried to lure Patrick into an ambush by pretending to be ill, Patrick supposedly caused the patient to drop dead. Patrick was always larger than life in these early accounts, <a href="https://confessio.ie/more/muirchu_english#">baptizing hundreds of souls at a time</a>. </p>
<p>Around the same time that these hagiographers worked, Brigid’s cult center at Kildare became one of the wealthiest and most powerful religious communities in Ireland. <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ekphrasis-at-Kildare%3A-The-Imaginative-Architecture-Bitel/2f212e95dae6583859f9d9856cb6504d7248d24d">Cogitosus</a> wrote that Kildare was “the head of virtually all the Irish churches and occupies the first place, excelling all the monasteries of the Irish. Its jurisdiction extends over the whole land of Ireland from sea to sea.” </p>
<p>Throughout the Middle Ages, Leinster elites continued to donate land and goods to Kildare. They vied to place their female kinfolk as abbess of Kildare until the community closed during the 16th-century <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199689736.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199689736-e-34">dissolution</a>, when the occupying English Protestant government of Ireland shut down all monasteries.</p>
<p>Kildare, however, could never match the status of <a href="http://what-when-how.com/medieval-ireland/armagh-medieval-ireland/">Armagh</a>, Patrick’s <a href="https://www.stpatricks-cathedral.org/history/">chief church</a>, which had the advantage of even greater royal patronage and grander donations by mightier kings. </p>
<p>Similarly, within the church hierarchy of medieval Europe, as in Catholicism today, Brigid could never outrank Patrick, because she was not a priest. Only priests could baptize, ordain, perform the sacrament of the Eucharist and give last rites. Women were not, and still are not, allowed to become ordained priests in Roman Catholicism. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, when Irish nationalists sought <a href="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/03/GettyImages-523899592-c2cbde6.jpg?webp=true&quality=90&resize=259%2C413">a symbol of their Catholicism</a> and country in the budding fight for independence, they chose the missionary bishop and founder of Armagh. A national holiday was declared <a href="https://www.officeholidays.com/holidays/st-patricks-day#:%7E:text=Patrick's%20Day%3F-,St.,a%20holiday%20in%20Northern%20Ireland.">in 1903</a> to honor St. Patrick.</p>
<h2>Brigid’s church falls to ruin</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An ancient cathedral with gray stone walls." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450737/original/file-20220308-13-udslqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450737/original/file-20220308-13-udslqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450737/original/file-20220308-13-udslqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450737/original/file-20220308-13-udslqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450737/original/file-20220308-13-udslqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450737/original/file-20220308-13-udslqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450737/original/file-20220308-13-udslqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Brigid’s Cathedral in Ireland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/saint-brigids-cathedral-royalty-free-image/508608497?adppopup=true">MJPinkstone/ Collections iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the meantime, Brigid’s church at Kildare had fallen into ruin. It was only in 1875 that it was rebuilt by the Protestant Church of Ireland.</p>
<p>Brigid’s devotees resigned themselves to Kildare’s secondary status as “one of the two pillars of the Kingdom, along with Patrick the pre-eminent,” as one <a href="https://www.tcd.ie/library/manuscripts/blog/2016/01/st-brigid-and-the-liber-hymnorum/">medieval hymnist</a> put it. </p>
<p>This is despite a tale, circulated by a ninth-century hagiographer, that Brigid was <a href="https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T201002/">accidentally ordained as a bishop</a> – apparently, Bishop Mel was so “intoxicated with the grace of God” as he prepared to veil Brigid that he read the wrong prayers over her. “This virgin alone in Ireland … will hold the episcopal ordination,” Mel declared, and a column of fire shot from the saint’s head. Unfortunately, other clerics refused to take the story seriously. </p>
<p>Brigid was venerated as “Mary of the Gael,” a saint for women, shepherds, beggars, refugees and those in childbirth. Her feast day, Feb. 1, is the same day as Imbolc, an ancient holiday celebrating the start of spring, season of fertility. Indeed, her associations with Imbolc have long raised suspicions about the possible <a href="https://mythicalireland.com/myths-and-legends/brigid-bright-goddess-of-the-gael/">pre-Christian origins</a> of her cult at Kildare.</p>
<p>Today, some people keep St. Brigid’s Day by weaving a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEkueEXU84A">special reed cross</a> or visiting a <a href="https://blogs.stthomas.edu/arthistory/2016/11/02/an-exploration-of-the-irish-holy-wells-of-st-brigid/">holy well</a> whose waters, blessed by Brigid, are believed to heal illness. The Brigidine Sisters of Kildare attend their <a href="https://www.kildare.ie/community/notices/perpetual-flame.asp">ever-burning flame</a> for Brigid, as <a href="https://www.sanctuaryofbrigid.com/flamekeepers/">nuns did in the Middle Ages</a>. These seem like modest observances compared with the massive parades that flood the main streets of towns around the globe in annual celebration of Patrick. </p>
<p>This year on March 17, when you’re wearing the green and singing “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=122isznJdto">Dirty Ol’ Town</a>,” take a moment to whisper thanks to St. Brigid, the compassionate, sensible, native-born patron saint of Ireland, and ask if Ireland’s premier patron saint should be a woman.</p>
<p>[<em>The most interesting religion stories from three major news organizations.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-best-of-1">Get This Week in Religion.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176659/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Bitel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Irish government recently declared a national holiday for St. Brigid. A medieval historian explains her fascinating life and history.Lisa Bitel, Professor of History & Religion, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/907932018-03-14T08:34:42Z2018-03-14T08:34:42ZWas St Patrick Welsh? An expert reviews the evidence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203574/original/file-20180126-100896-yddfif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">St Patrick.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaqian/472197983">Jaqian/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I wandered the streets of Galway, on St Patrick’s Day 2002, wearing a t-shirt which stated “St Patrick: he’s Welsh, you know”. It was intended, and received, as friendly banter, in the context of a resounding Irish victory over Wales in the Six Nations rugby tournament a fortnight previously. But is it true?</p>
<p>The answer should be pretty straightforward. After all, Patrick tells us, in one of the two Latin works of his that have survived, where he was from: a town named Banna Venta Berniae. Unfortunately, we don’t know where that was, except that it was somewhere in Britain. As he was captured there by Irish raiders, it must have been reasonably close to the west coast of Britain. So it is quite possibly, but by no means necessarily, somewhere in Wales.</p>
<p>Perhaps its precise location doesn’t really matter. In Patrick’s lifetime (some time in the fifth century AD), Wales, as we know it, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-people-of-wales-became-welsh-82192">did not exist</a>. The inhabitants of the various kingdoms which made up the geographical area which we now call Wales called themselves “Britons”, as indeed did many other people in the part of Britain south of Hadrian’s Wall – the old Roman province of Britannia. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203573/original/file-20180126-100923-zzxn33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Patrick depicted in stained glass at St Benin’s Church, County Galway.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kilbennan_St._Benin%27s_Church_Window_St._Patrick_Detail_2010_09_16.jpg">Andreas F. Borchert/WIkimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But those Britons who spoke the British Celtic language known as Brittonic (the ancestor of Welsh, Cornish and Breton) began, in the same century, to use another name for themselves?, Combrogī – “fellow countrymen”. This term is the ancestor of the English place name Cumbria, and of the word the Welsh use today to describe themselves: Cymry (in the Middle Ages, this term was also used for the country of Wales, which is now spelled Cymru). Whether or not this term was in use in the fifth century, however, is impossible to say. </p>
<p>By this time, Germanic-speaking kingdoms were forming in the south and east of the island of Britain. They were the forerunners of what <a href="https://www.durhamworldheritagesite.com/history/bede">historian, and later saint, Bede</a>, in the eighth century would call the “gens Anglorum”, “the English people”. These people were not Britons, either to themselves, or to their neighbours to the west, who, then and now, called them “Saxons” (Welsh “Saeson”, Gaelic “Sasanaigh”). They, in turn, called the Britons, “Wealas”, the origin of the word “Welsh”. So from a contemporary English point of view at least, Patrick would have been Welsh.</p>
<h2>Language and literature</h2>
<p>It has been claimed, by scholars both medieval and modern, that St Patrick spoke Brittonic. We know that he could write good Latin, but he called it lingua aliena, “a foreign language”. It was not his native tongue, but, as a high status language with a venerable literary tradition, and the lingua franca of the church, it was the obvious choice for him to write in. Without any further evidence, we could quite confidently deduce that Brittonic would be his native tongue (Irish, English and Pictish are much less likely candidates for a native of western Britannia at this time). But perhaps we can go further than this.</p>
<p>In the seventh century, an Irish monk named Muirchú wrote a <a href="http://pages.ucsd.edu/%7Edkjordan/arch/romans/Muirchu-StPatrick.html">Life of St Patrick</a> in Latin. In it, the few historical facts about Patrick recoverable from his own writings are almost completely obscured by the numerous miracles that were de rigeur in medieval writings on the lives of saints, and the blatant propaganda of the ambitious church of Armagh, which was in the process of appropriating Patrick for itself. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, Muirchú records verbatim two of Patrick’s sayings: “modebroth” and “gra(t)zacham”. Muirchú does not tell us what language these utterances are in, but both were interpreted as being in Brittonic by a ninth-century Irish lexicographer, Cormac mac Cúilennáin, the bishop-king of Cashel. </p>
<p>Modebroth, he claimed, is a corrupt form of the Welsh “myn duw brawd” – “by the god of judgement”. This could be right, but gra(t)zacham derives ultimately from the Latin “gratias agam” (“let me give thanks”), or gratias agamus (“let us give thanks”).</p>
<p>Cormac seems to have interpreted it as Brittonic on the eminently reasonable ground that Patrick was a Briton, and that anything he is reported to have said which was not obviously Irish or Latin must have been Brittonic. So if he was wrong about gra(t)zacham, he may have been wrong about modebroth, too, which may, in fact, have been an Irish phrase meaning “divine judgment”, subjected to the sort of modification common in religious oaths (see, for instance, the English “gosh” and “jeepers” instead of “God” and “Jesus”). At any rate, there is no very compelling reason to believe that Muirchú really did have access to the exact words which Patrick had uttered 200 years previously.</p>
<p>So what’s the verdict? Patrick may very well have been born in present-day Wales. He was certainly born in the west of Britain. He may have thought of himself as a Cymro, and the English would doubtless have classified him as Welsh. His first language was almost certainly the ancestor of Welsh. And yet, we know that he chose Ireland over the land of his birth. He is a footnote in the history of Wales, but utterly central to that of Ireland. </p>
<p>In the game of rugby which inspired my St Patrick’s Day t-shirt, one of the (many) try scorers for Ireland was a certain Ronán O’Gara, born San Diego, California. When it comes to identity, place of birth isn’t everything.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Rodway does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>St Patrick chose Ireland over the place of his birth – but where was that exactly?Simon Rodway, Lecturer in Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/922532018-03-12T13:08:50Z2018-03-12T13:08:50Z10 things to know about the real St. Patrick<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208974/original/file-20180305-146703-jnv1p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Saint Patrick.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thadz/6086081141">Thad Zajdowicz</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 17, people around the world will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by parading in green hats, sporting images of shamrocks and <a href="https://www.livescience.com/37626-leprechauns.html">leprechauns</a> – tiny, grinning, fairy men – pinned to their lapels. Patrick’s picture will adorn greeting cards: an aged, bearded <a href="http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=89">bishop in flowing robes</a>, grasping a bishop’s staff and glaring at a coil of snakes.</p>
<p>The icon refers to one of Patrick’s legendary miracles in which he is said to have prayed to banish all snakes from Ireland. However, as a <a href="http://www-bcf.usc.edu/%7Ebitel/">historian of medieval Ireland</a>, I can assure you that the real St. Patrick, who lived and worked in the fifth century, never saw a snake or wore a shamrock.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#undefined">Patrick’s own writings</a> and early accounts of the saint’s career reveal many interesting details about the life of this patron saint of Ireland. Here are 10 things you may not know about St. Patrick.</p>
<h2>1. Patrick was not Irish</h2>
<p>Patrick was born around 450 A.D., just when Roman troops withdrew from Britain. His father was a gentleman and a Christian deacon who owned a small estate in a place called <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#undefined">Bannavem Taburniae.</a> </p>
<p>Scholars aren’t sure where this place was – it was probably on the west coast around Bristol, near the southern border of modern Wales and England. </p>
<h2>2. Patrick was a slave</h2>
<p>Irish slave traders sailed the waters off that same coast, and one day they came ashore to capture <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#undefined">the teenage Patrick</a> and his neighbors, to sell back in Ireland. Patrick spent six years tending sheep in the west of Ireland.</p>
<h2>3. Patrick heard voices</h2>
<p>While chasing sheep on the hills, Patrick prayed a hundred times a day, in all kinds of weather. It paid off. One night a <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#undefined">mysterious voice called to him</a>, saying, “Look, your ship is ready!” Patrick knew he wasn’t hearing sheep. The time was right for his escape.</p>
<h2>4. Patrick refused to ‘suck a man’s breasts’</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208976/original/file-20180305-146697-ssg9ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208976/original/file-20180305-146697-ssg9ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208976/original/file-20180305-146697-ssg9ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208976/original/file-20180305-146697-ssg9ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208976/original/file-20180305-146697-ssg9ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208976/original/file-20180305-146697-ssg9ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208976/original/file-20180305-146697-ssg9ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Patrick Catholic Church, Ohio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASaint_Patrick_Catholic_Church_(Junction_City%2C_Ohio)_-_stained_glass%2C_Saint_Patrick.jpg">Nheyob (Own work).</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Patrick made his way to Ireland’s east coast and sought passage on a ship bound for Britain. The captain, a pagan, didn’t like the look of him and demanded that Patrick <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#undefined">“suck his breasts,”</a> a ritual gesture symbolizing acceptance of the captain’s authority. Patrick refused – instead he tried to convert the crew.</p>
<p>For some reason, the captain still took him aboard. </p>
<h2>5. Patrick had visions</h2>
<p>One night Patrick dreamed that Satan tested his faith by dropping an enormous rock on him. He lay crushed by its weight until dawn broke, when <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#undefined">he called out</a>, “Helias! Helias!” – the name of the Greek sun god. The rock disappeared. Patrick <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#undefined">took it as a kind of epiphany</a>. He later wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I believe that I was helped by Christ the Lord.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Patrick had other peculiar visions, too. Back home at Bannavem Taburniae, he was visited by an angel with a message from the Irish: “We beg you, Holy Boy, to come and walk again among us.” He trained as a bishop and went back to Ireland.</p>
<h2>6. Patrick did something unmentionable</h2>
<p>Years into his mission, someone, it seems, told a dirty secret about Patrick to his fellow bishops. “They brought up against me after thirty years something I had already confessed … some things I had done one day - rather, in one hour, when I was young,” <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#">he wrote</a>. </p>
<p>Patrick did not tell us what he did – worship idols? Engage in a forbidden sexual practice? Take gifts from converts?</p>
<p>Whatever it was, Patrick retrospectively understood his zealous Irish mission to be penance for his youthful sins. While he spread Christianity around Ireland, he was often beaten, put in chains or extorted. “Every day there is the chance that I will be killed, or surrounded, or taken into slavery,” <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#">he complained</a>. </p>
<h2>7. Patrick duelled with druids</h2>
<p>Two centuries after his death, Irish believers wanted more exciting stories of Patrick’s life than the saint’s own account.</p>
<p>One legend (written 700 A.D.) described Patrick’s <a href="https://www.confessio.ie/more/muirchu_english#">contest</a> with native religious leaders, the druids. The druids insulted Patrick, tried to poison him and engaged him in magical duels – much like students of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts – in which they competed to manipulate the weather, destroy each other’s sacred books and survive raging fires. </p>
<p>When one druid dared to blaspheme the Christian God, however, Patrick sent the druid flying into air – the man dropped to the ground and broke his skull. </p>
<h2>8. Patrick made God promise</h2>
<p>Another legend from around the same time tells how Patrick fasted for 40 days atop a mountain, weeping, throwing things, and refusing to descend until an angel came on God’s behalf to <a href="https://archive.org/stream/tripartitepatrick00stokuoft#page/119/">grant the saint’s outrageous demands</a>. These included the following: Patrick would redeem more souls from hell than any other saint; Patrick, rather than God, would judge Irish sinners at the end of time; and the English would never rule Ireland. </p>
<p>We know how that last one worked out. Perhaps God will keep the other two promises. </p>
<h2>9. Patrick never mentioned a shamrock</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208969/original/file-20180305-146655-kqf1o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208969/original/file-20180305-146655-kqf1o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208969/original/file-20180305-146655-kqf1o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208969/original/file-20180305-146655-kqf1o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208969/original/file-20180305-146655-kqf1o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208969/original/file-20180305-146655-kqf1o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208969/original/file-20180305-146655-kqf1o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">St. Patrick’s Day shamrock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/st-patrick-s-day-clover-patrick-1272034/">Maiconfz</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>None of the early Patrician stories featured the shamrock – or Irish seamróg – which is a word for common clover, a small plant with three leaves. Yet children in Catholic schools still learn that Patrick used a shamrock as a symbol of the Christian Trinity when he preached to the heathen Irish. </p>
<p>The shamrock connection was first mentioned in print by an <a href="https://archive.org/details/journal15irelgoog">English visitor to Ireland in 1684</a>, who wrote that on Saint Patrick’s feast day, “the vulgar superstitiously wear shamroges, 3 leav’d grass, which they likewise eat (they say) to cause a sweet breath.” The Englishman also noted that “very few of the zealous are found sober at night.” </p>
<h2>10. Patrick did not drive the snakes out of Ireland</h2>
<p>As for the miraculous snake-charming attributed to Patrick, it could not have happened because there were <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080313-snakes-ireland_2.html">no snakes in pre-modern Ireland</a>. Reptiles never made it across the land bridge that prehistorically linked the island to the European continent. </p>
<p>Most likely, the miracle was <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/atheology/2017/03/st-patrick-snakes-forging-ancient-modern-myth/">plagiarized</a> from some other saint’s life and eventually added to Patrick’s repertoire. </p>
<p>Party-goers on March 17 need not worry about ancient historical details, though. Whatever the truth of Patrick’s mission, he became one of the three patrons of Ireland, along with Sts. <a href="https://monasticmatrix.osu.edu/commentaria/st-brigit-ireland">Brigit</a> and <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/columba-e.asp">Columba</a>– the latter two were born in Ireland.</p>
<p>Wishing you “Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhaiobh” – Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208968/original/file-20180305-146700-ca2blu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208968/original/file-20180305-146700-ca2blu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208968/original/file-20180305-146700-ca2blu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208968/original/file-20180305-146700-ca2blu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208968/original/file-20180305-146700-ca2blu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208968/original/file-20180305-146700-ca2blu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208968/original/file-20180305-146700-ca2blu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Patrick’s Day parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASt_Patricks_Day%2C_Downpatrick%2C_March_2011_(045).JPG">Ardfern (Own work).</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Bitel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are many myths associated with St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. But Patrick’s own writings and early biographies reveal the person behind the legend.Lisa Bitel, Professor of History & Religion, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/745042017-03-16T02:25:23Z2017-03-16T02:25:23ZDonald Trump and Enda Kenny celebrate a tense St. Patrick’s Day<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160998/original/image-20170315-5364-2o5iw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny in March.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 16, political leaders from the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, along with a number of Irish-American politicians, will attend a gala St. Patrick’s Day event at the White House. </p>
<p>Though the White House celebration originated in the Truman era, it took on greater significance in the mid-1990s. That’s when Bill Clinton championed the event as a way of furthering the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Greening-White-House-Conor-OClery/dp/0717126277">Northern Irish Peace Process</a>. For all their disagreements back home, Clinton believed, the White House festivities – often featuring long sessions around the piano and the quaffing of Guinness and Jameson’s – could at least temporarily bring together normally antagonistic Northern Irish politicians. The invite list soon ranged from the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein’s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100527040104/http://yourdemocracy.newstatesman.com:80/profile/gerry-adams">Gerry Adams</a> to the Democratic Unionist Party’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/12/the-rev-ian-paisley">Ian Paisley</a>. </p>
<p>The tradition of annual White House-sponsored partying continued into the Bush and Obama administrations, taking a difficult turn only during one of the several crises that marked the Northern Irish Peace Process. </p>
<p>In 2005, responding to the killing of a young Irish republican named Robert McCartney in a Belfast bar frequented by <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-32590286">high-level Irish Republican Army figures</a>, Bush “disinvited” Adams <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/TheList/story?id=597799">from the event</a>. The move was strongly supported by Sen. Edward Kennedy and several other notable Irish-American politicians. But later that year, the IRA announced the end of its long armed campaign and began the final decommissioning of its weapons. With the emergence of relatively stable political institutions in Northern Ireland that followed, the White House bash started up again. It has been going strong ever since. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331776.001.0001/acprof-9780195331776">the Irish-American experience</a>, I have followed this annual party with interest and hope. The fact that it has generally been so uneventful – even dull – is a good sign for Northern Ireland and U.S.-Irish relations.</p>
<p>This year it’s different. </p>
<h2>A drumbeat of criticism</h2>
<p>In Ireland, a drumbeat of <a href="http://www.thejournal.ie/enda-kenny-white-house-3213305-Jan2017/">criticism</a> has been directed against both Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny and Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams for their decision to attend the event. Kenny has <a href="http://www.thejournal.ie/irish-government-trump-3071462-Nov2016/">condemned Trump’s rhetoric</a> in the past. And the fact that he will be <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/fine-gael-leadership-enda-kenny-to-step-down-after-easter-1.2985600">leaving office</a> soon means that he’s in a good position to take a stand.</p>
<p>On this side of the Atlantic, Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland and unsuccessful Democratic presidential contender, <a href="http://irishecho.com/2017/03/omalley-calls-for-st-patricks-boycott-of-white-house/">has called</a> for Irish-American politicians to boycott the proceedings. </p>
<p>What’s going on?</p>
<p>To take the Irish situation first: Many in Ireland feel that they are facing two sides of the same coin. </p>
<p>On one side: Brexit, which will deal a direct blow to the Irish economy and might possibly undermine the delicately balanced machinery of the 1998 <a href="https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201617/ldselect/ldeucom/76/7607.htm">Good Friday Peace Accord</a>. A new “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, for example, could be a disaster for <a href="https://qz.com/892369/with-brexit-looming-irelands-once-disputed-border-is-again-contentious/">the peace process.</a> People and goods now move freely across the border and the shutting down of security checkpoints symbolized the progress that had been made.</p>
<p>On the other side: Donald Trump, whose promises to bring back American jobs could threaten an Irish economy in which Apple, Google and several other U.S. high tech companies have been <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-apple-helped-create-irelands-economies-real-and-fantastical">major job generators</a>.</p>
<p>Then, there is the question of the <a href="http://www.irishcentral.com/news/the-life-of-an-irish-illegal-immigrant-in-an-era-of-anti-immigrant-furor">50,000 or so</a> undocumented Irish people residing in the U.S. </p>
<p>Though vastly outnumbered by undocumented immigrants from Central America and Mexico, Irish-born men and women have been part of the unauthorized population <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=182649">since the 1980s</a>. The harsh anti-immigration rhetoric and executive actions of the Trump administration have caused a good deal of <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/undocumented-irish-urged-to-be-calm-but-vigilant-1.2985329#.WLEAbmk7hl4.mailto">anxiety in this community</a>, one for which the Irish government has traditionally spoken.</p>
<p>Irish America as a whole presents a more complex picture. The number of American citizens of Irish descent is approximately <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2013/cb13-ff03.html">34.5 million</a>, compared with the mere <a href="http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpr/censusofpopulation2016-preliminaryresults/intro/">4.8 million residents</a> of the Irish Republic and <a href="http://www.irishnews.com/news/2016/06/24/news/northern-ireland-s-population-hits-record-high-577612/">1.9 million</a> residents of Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>The fact that <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/">60 percent</a> of white Catholic voters, a group in which Irish-Americans are an important part, voted for Trump may indicate that the politics of anti-abortion and traditional conservative values canceled out the efforts of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to wrap herself in the mantle of the Northern Irish Peace Process. Even the decision of the New York-based Irish America magazine to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/02/02/hillary-clinton-to-be-inducted-into-irish-american-hall-of-fame/">induct her</a> into its “Irish America Hall of Fame” in 2015 didn’t seem to help.</p>
<p>And yet Irish-American conservatism is not the whole story. </p>
<p>There exists a tradition of political dissent in Irish America that has often run against the conservative grain. From militant labor leaders like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mike-Quill-Himself-Memoir-Shirley-Quill/dp/0815966008">Mike Quill</a> to the anti-poverty crusader <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Other-American-Life-Michael-Harrington/dp/1586480367">Michael Harrington</a> and the recently deceased New Left leader-turned-Democratic politician <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Inside-Search-Soul-America/dp/1859844774">Tom Hayden</a>, such figures have represented a kind of alternative liberal-progressive Irish-American tradition. This tradition has sometimes merged with the long <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/irish-nationalists-in-america-9780195331776?cc=us&lang=en&">Irish-American crusade to free Ireland</a> from British control. </p>
<p>Though this liberal-progressive tradition has grown weaker in recent years, it is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/st-patricks-day-anti-trump-rally-new-york_us_58c43028e4b0ed71826d0b27">far from dead</a>. It is this tradition, as much as the difficulties facing the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the age of Brexit and Trump, that is making this White House St. Patrick’s gala so different from those that went before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74504/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Brundage has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Irish American Cultural Institute.</span></em></p>The Irish prime minister is in Washington for the annual shamrock photo op. But, with Trump in the White House, even usually placid U.S.-Irish relations are a bit dodgy.David Brundage, Professor and Graduate Program Director, History Department, University of California, Santa CruzLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.