I'm not Irish. Well, there may be some Irish DNA traces in my cells. But, if so, those traces are miniscule, and probably of the scorned Scots-Irish variety. Certainly the only brogue I've ever affected was a clunky type of shoe I sometimes wore as a kid. I've never seen a four leafed clover. The only clovers I'm familiar with had three leaves and purple flowers that were attractive enough, but unfortunately all a-buzz with bumble bees.
Irish or not, St. Patrick's Day was a big deal as a kid. Not because anyone knew who St. Patrick was, but because if you didn't sport some wearing apparel colored green, everyone had implicit permission to pinch you. Of course, my fellow school inmates pinched me on other days as well; they just didn't shout "St. Patrick's Day!" while doing so.
St. Patrick, contrary to the belief of some non-Irish Americans, wasn't a leprechaun. Nor did he sport a green cap, or smoke from a long-stemmed pipe. He was a missionary, and not really very jolly. He wasn't what we today think of as Irish. He may have been born in what is now -- oh, the shame! -- the English county of Cumbria. He may even have been an amalgam of two totally different people, a guy named Palladius and Patrick proper, but that's still something for historians to sort out.
He probably lived between about 340 and 440, with his active work taking place in the latter fourth century. Those weren't carefree and frolicsome times in Ireland, or anywhere else. Patrick, so far as we know, wasn't given to pinching his peers for failing to wear green. The Irish have their little ways, however, and they weren't all that keen on being converted and baptized by this weird guy from England (although England wasn't yet England). He was seen as the fulfillment of an obscure Druid prophesy:
Across the sea will come Adze-head, crazed in the head,
his cloak with hole for the head, his stick bent in the head.
He will chant impieties from a table in the front of his house;
all his people will answer: "so be it, so be it."
Nevertheless, he did baptize "thousands," according to his own written account. And he did become the patron saint of Ireland, an honor given perhaps in shamefaced recompense for his somewhat frigid reception by the early Irish.
St. Patrick wasn't particularly meek and mild. When a local Irish "king" (leader of a small band of Celtic ruffians) sold some of St. Patrick's converts into slavery, St. Patrick hurled an excommunication at him and denounced the king's followers as "fellow citizens of the devils" and "associates of the Scots." The Irish could accept with some equanimity a relationship with the devil, but equating them with the heathen Scots ... well, faith and begorrah, that hurts!
Apart from St. Patrick's religious accomplishments, he is best known to a secular posterity as the saint who drove the snakes out of Ireland. And, true enough, there are no snakes in Ireland. (Except maybe in a zoo, or in such hypothetical roadside attractions as "Only 37 More Miles, See Amazing Snake Pit, Children Free When With Adults."
But sorry, Mike, Sean and Paddy. Neutral scientists claim that all the snakes were banished from Ireland not by St. Patrick, but by the ice packs of the last glacial period, some ten thousand years ago. Ireland has since kept elite, insular, non-serpentine company with such lands as New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland and Antarctica -- none of which was ever proselytized or even dreamed of by good St. Pat. Another pious legend exploded.
So if some of you want to run around today, pinching people in honor of a dour fourth century missionary who was ridiculed by the same Irish who now claim him as their patron saint, a man who is remembered today primarily as the guy who drove non-existent snakes off the Emerald Isle -- fine, be my guest. But those schoolyard pinches can damn well hurt, and don't any of you pinchers think I've forgotten who you are.
No comments:
Post a Comment