The Legend of St Patrick's Day...........
There are many different legends about St Patrick, but most of them agree on some points. It is known that he was born in Wales and was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland. He became fluent in the Irish language while he was there and eventually escaped to the European continent. After much travelling he entered the church and soon became a deacon, then priest and finally a bishop. Because of his fluency in the Irish language, he was sent back to Ireland as a missionary.
St Patrick was not the first missionary to be sent to Ireland, but he was the first to encounter the druids and abolish their pagan practices. He converted their warrior chiefs and princes and thousands of their followers and baptised them at the Holy Wells.
Another thing that the legends agree on is that he drove the snakes from Ireland while standing on a hillside armed with a club and shamrock while the serpents crawled into the sea, but whether this was a symbolic driving out of the pagan practice of worshipping snakes and the serpent idols or not has often been debated. What is certain is there are no snakes in Ireland today, but whether or not there ever were is uncertain.
The symbol associated with St Patrick is the shamrock or seamroy as it was once called. St Patrick used to preach out in the open on hillsides. Once when explaining the doctrine of the Trinity he bent and plucked a shamrock from the ground and used its triad shape to explain his meaning. The shamrock, also used in the snake driving out, was a sacred druidic symbol as well being used to cure snake bite and was said to be poison to snake. Tradition said this was why you never saw a snake crawling across trefoil. Today the Irish people around the world celebrate St Patrick's Day with parades, drinking and dancing. One of the things they do is colour food and drink green, even the beer!! |
