Saint Patrick's Excellent Adventure ☘️
Kidnapping! Childhood slavery! Shamrocks! Multiplying corpses! And more!
It’s the feast day of Saint Patrick—Ireland’s favorite Guinness-drinking, snake-chasing, clover-picking bishop. (Or not, as you’ll come to find out).
Apparently Saint Patrick was never officially canonized, not because he wasn’t a terrifically saintly person, but because he lived and died before the canonization process was formalized by the Catholic Church. It’s said that he’s a “saint in heaven,” and does still appear on the official List of Saints.
But despite the fact that he’s never been put in a cannon, or whatever, ole Pat is so popular that he’s often called the Apostle of Ireland—which seems like a step up from Saint, unless I’m mistaken.
There aren’t a lot of historic records from the time Saint Patrick supposedly lived. As a result, we can’t say exactly when Patrick was born, but historians agree that he most likely lived in Britain around late fourth/early fifth centuryish times. It’s also pretty clear that he was born in Britain and was later some kind of missionary in Ireland, but other than that, the details of his life are a bit waffley, or a bit too legendary to be considered actual fact.
But, according to Patrick’s own autobiography (called the Confessio of Patrick), young Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates when he was 16. He was then held captive in Ireland as a slave for six years. It’s said that he became a shepherd and found God as he tended his master’s sheep, spending his days in prayer and contemplation.
After six years, Patrick escaped back to Britain. According to the Confessio, this was a difficult journey, to say the least. It involved fleeing his master’s house and walking to a port that was 200 miles away. He then catches a boat back to Britain, but they get lost or something, because they have to wander in some kind of zany British wilderness for 28 days. (Very Biblical). Eventually they’re all so hungry that they’re gonna pass out, but Patrick says a prayer and God sends them a boar to eat. They all survive (except the boar) and become Christians.
Bear in mind, this is all supposedly told from the perspective of Patrick himself, so, the details may have been a bit… exaggerated.
We do know that Patrick eventually became a missionary and brought Christianity back to Ireland. He was apparently very beloved, and venerated to the point of becoming a saint in the hearts of the Irish people.
There are, of course, lots of other stories about Saint Patrick, including the time he supposedly banished all the snakes out of Ireland. In the story, Saint Patrick chased all the snakes into the sea after they attacked him as he sat on top of a hill fasting for 40 days.
This story isn’t remotely true. While snakes aren’t native to Ireland, it’s purely for scientific reasons, and has nothing to do with ole Pat. In fact, Patrick wasn’t even the first Saint credited with banishing snakes from Ireland in the first place (that would be Columba, another patron saint of Ireland). So. There’s that.
The other famous story—which is much more probable—is of Saint Patrick teaching pagans about the holy trinity using the shamrock as a three-in-one symbol. I personally find that image of God to be a bit ghoulish (see below… there are three beings… but they share a… stem? a torso? legs? no thank you) but the pagans seemed to like it well enough because they all converted to Christianity as a result.
But perhaps my favorite tidbit about Saint Patrick is that there was a bit of a fight over who would get to keep his corpse. According to the 17th century Annals of the Four Masters, after Saint Patrick died, the Airgíalla and the Uliad each wanted to take the saint’s body home with them. But before an all-out brawl broke out, a miracle occurred, and suddenly there appeared to be two bodies. Each group believed that they had the true body of Saint Patrick and took it home with them.
To this day, the exact location of Saint Patrick’s remains a bit of a mystery.
March 17th is—according to medieval legend—the day Saint Patrick died, so it’s celebrated widely as his feast day. It falls during the Christian season of Lent, but in parts of Ireland, the prohibition of meat and booze was lifted for the day, and Irish folk would feast and dance and make merry for the entire day. This, plus the fact of Irish Americans keeping their homeland traditions alive, is probably the reason St. Patrick’s Day is such an over-the-top, boozy, debauched holiday today. It’s become a bit like a Guinness-flavored, beef-chewing, green-tinted Mardi Gras. For better or for worse.
I, myself, am not a lick Irish, though I am a very robust mix of pretty much every other Anglican bloodline. Though I still have an affinity for the Irish people, especially knowing how often they’ve been treated as underdogs throughout history. Being marginalized themselves, they’ve had some affinity with other marginalized peoples. For example, as far back as 1847, during the height of the potato famine, the Choctaw people collected $170 to send to the Irish people.
16 years earlier, the Choctaw had lost thousands of their own on the Trail of Tears, and the suffering of the Irish inspired a sense of generosity and goodwill between the two nations. Even though it’s been over a century since this small gift was given, the Irish people have not forgotten. Over the years, they’ve made many gestures of gratitude for the aid they received. In 2020, the Irish people donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Native Americans for Covid relief.
I was especially moved by one Irish commenter who wrote, “You helped us in our darkest hour. Honoured to return the kindness. Ireland remembers, with thanks.”
And so, I’m not mad that folks remember Ireland today. I might even snag a bit of beef to chew and potatoes to fry, if there’s any to be had. I hope you’re all well, and that you enjoyed these stories of Saint Patrick and his glorious Ireland. Lá le Pádraig!
With love,
☘️Becca Lee, the Haunted Librarian☘️