Millions of people around the world will mark St Patrick’s Day on March 17th, but what do we really know about the man and what is merely myth? Here are some of the traditions – and the trivia – associated with our national apostle.
Ireland’s patron saint wasn’t Irish
Historians generally agree that St Patrick, who was probably born near the end of the fourth century, was of British descent. The Welsh village of Banwen, on the southern edge of the Brecon Beacons, claims to be Bannavem Taburniae, the Roman settlement where, Patrick wrote in his Confessions, he was born. Each year it holds a service in his honour. (He may also have been born in Scotland or England.)
When Patrick was 16 he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold as a slave to a druid, or Celtic priest, in what is today Co Antrim. After six years as a shepherd Patrick escaped back to Britain, where he is said to have been ordained as a priest before returning to Ireland as a missionary.
Patrick’s forgotten wife
In the old Irish calendar the day after St Patrick’s Day is Sheelah’s Day, in commemoration of the woman who many believe to have been Patrick’s wife. According to Shane Lehane, a folklorist at University College Cork, the celebrations each March 17th were extended by 24 hours to remember her life as well.
An early reference to the continued festivities appears in the book The Stranger in Ireland: Or, a Tour in the Southern and Western Parts of That Country, in the Year 1805, by John Carr: “From a spirit of gallantry, these merry devotees continue drunk the greater part of the next day, viz, the 18th of March, all in honour of Sheelagh, St Patrick’s wife.”
Sheelah still has a keen presence on the Canadian island of Newfoundland, where many Irish people emigrated from the late 1600s onwards (and where people still speak with Irish accents). They brought with them the tradition of Sheelah and Sheelah’s Day, a legacy that lives on in “Sheila’s brush”.
This is the name Newfoundlanders and other Atlantic Canadians give to a winter snowstorm that falls after St Patrick’s Day. (They sometimes refer to it as Sheelah’s broom – or, if the weather has brought only a bare covering of snow, as Sheila’s blush.)
Shamrock symbolism
Legend has it that St Patrick used the shamrock to teach the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the idea that God exists in three divine consubstantial “persons”: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Caleb Threlkeld, an early Irish botanist, described the three-leaf clover’s symbolism in Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum, his treatise on native Irish flora from 1726. Referring to the plant by its Irish name, seamar-oge, Threlkeld tells of people wearing it in their hats on March 17th.
Threlkeld, who was also a cleric, expressed his discontent with the holiday’s drinking culture: “When they wet their Seamar-oge, they often commit Excess in Liquor, which is not a right keeping of a Day to the Lord.” It generally leads to debauchery, he said.
The shamrock, which many people wear on St Patrick’s Day, became associated with Ireland more broadly during rebellions against Britain in the 18th century.
In keeping with tradition, Micheál Martin presented a bowl of shamrock to the US president during the Taoiseach’s visit to see Donald Trump in Washington, DC, this week.
St Patrick was never canonised
Despite being Ireland’s patron saint, St Patrick was not canonised by the Catholic Church during his lifetime. Such a process did not exist when he died in what is believed to have been 461. It wasn’t until 993 that the first saint was formally canonised – an honour that went to St Ulrich of Augsburg – and the church didn’t establish an official process, overseen by the pope, until the 12th century. Patrick remains venerated nevertheless, and is commonly regarded as having saintly status.
Was Patrick a Protestant?
During the Gaelic revival, Protestant intellectuals and churchmen embarked on a mission to prove that St Patrick was Protestant. Some even studied Irish as part of their quest.
In 1885 a group of clergymen anonymously published a historical catechism with the words Erin Go Bragh – or Ireland Forever – on its title page. In it, they discussed their belief that Patrick introduced Protestantism to Ireland and claimed several other saints for the Church of Ireland, including Columba, Columbanus and Aidan.
They went on to argue that the arrival of Catholicism in 1172 forced on Ireland “a series of calamities hardly to be equalled in the world”, from which the Irish could be saved only by a return to Protestantism, the “ancient faith”.
The first St Patrick’s Day parade was American
The tradition of St Patrick’s Day parades began in America, before the founding of the United States. A Spanish colony in what is now St Augustine, in Florida, held the first recorded parade on March 17th, 1601. The celebrations were organised by the colony’s Irish priest, Padre Ricardo Artur, or Fr Richard Arthur, a former soldier believed to have been born in Limerick.
More than a century later, homesick Irish soldiers serving in the British military paraded on March 17th in Boston in 1737 and in New York in 1762. NYC’s annual parade is now the world’s biggest celebration of the patron saint of Ireland.
Barefoot pilgrims 1: Croagh Patrick
One of the ways Patrick is honoured in Ireland is through pilgrimages to sites associated with him. The best known of these is the annual pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick. Thousands of pilgrims make the journey on the last Sunday of July, which is known as Reek Sunday after the nickname of the Co Mayo mountain.
Patrick is said to have spent 40 days and nights fasting there, after which he banished all snakes, demons and magicians to a lake at the base of the mountain called Log na nDeamhan, or Demon’s Hollow. Many of the pilgrims who scale this 765m mountain, rain or shine, start before dawn, some in their bare feet.
[ A holy mountain: Croagh Patrick in myth, prehistory and historyOpens in new window ]
Barefoot pilgrims 2: St Patrick’s Purgatory
Another popular pilgrimage is to St Patrick’s Purgatory, on Station Island in Lough Derg, Co Donegal. This is where Patrick is said to have been shown the gates of hell by Christ, when he peered into a cave on the island. Seeing the horrors of hell inspired Patrick to convince the doubters among his converts of the existence of a Christian afterlife.
The tradition of a three-day stay on the island began in the 16th century. Infamous for its gruelling nature, it demands three days of sleepless fasting and constant prayer, all the while going barefoot despite the island’s stony landscape. Seamus Heaney writes about the pilgrimage in the title poem of Station Island, his sixth collection of poetry.
Patrick’s death
According to the St Patrick Centre, when he returned to Ireland Patrick came ashore near Downpatrick, after currents swept his boat from the Irish Sea into Strangford Lough. A quickly converted local chieftain gave him a sabhall, or barn, from where Patrick travelled extensively, spreading the Christian message around Ireland.
He returned to Saul, the village named after the barn, to retire after an angel (according to some early writers) told him to “return to the place from which you came”. He died there on March 17th around the year 461. His supposed burial alongside two other Irish saints on Down Hill gave rise to the couplet “In Down, three saints one grave do fill, Patrick, Brigid and Columcille.”
Patrick’s Confession
Patrick had a unique selling point among the saints of early Ireland: he was the only one who left a personal account of his spiritual life’s journey. His Confession’s natural style has contributed to historians’ view that it is genuinely his work. By his own account Patrick baptised many thousands of people.
Three of the world’s biggest and best St Patrick’s Day parades
New York City, United States
New York hosts the world’s biggest St Patrick’s Day celebration, with more than two million spectators watching 150,000 participants, according to its organisers. NYC’s traditional parade predates the foundation of the United States itself; the first one was held in 1762.
Montserrat, Caribbean
Aside from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Montserrat is the only other place in the world outside Ireland where St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday. The Caribbean island’s celebration is linked to the history of enslavement of African people: on March 17th, 1768, a group of slaves staged an unsuccessful uprising. Today, a freedom run, masquerade dancing and other events during Montserrat’s two-week St Patrick’s festival commemorate this history.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ireland opened its embassy in Buenos Aires in 1948, making Argentina the country’s oldest partner in Latin America. It has about 500,000 people of Irish descent, the largest population outside the English-speaking world. The capital city becomes a sea of green each year when it hosts the largest St Patrick’s Day parade and party in South America.
