I know I should have my tongue torn out and my typing fingers chopped off, but I think maybe St Patrick is over-rated.
Consider the facts. The first time he came to Ireland, he was so uninterested in seeing the place, they had to bring him in chains. And keep him hostage for a number of years. Did he have a good time during his visit? Hardly – minding sheep on Slemish is not what you’d call a fulfilling profession. Staring at his flock, Patrick was heart-sick for home the whole time he was here; and when the chance arose to put distance between him and us, he grabbed it.
And he stayed clear of us for years until, over time, his conscience began to gnaw and gnaw. Eventually he could take it no more and, teeth clenched, he headed back to spend time with the pagan paddies in their godawful country where he’d been so miserable.
And when he arrived, Patrick quickly established himself as the worst teacher Ireland had ever seen. Calling for attention, he began speaking to the cheerfully Godless Irish about the nature of the Almighty, and in particular the nature of the Holy Trinity.
“It’s three Gods in One” he told them.
“Run that past us again?” someone called back.
“The Almighty is three Gods in One – The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” (they hadn’t got into the Holy Spirit thing then).
The leading brains in Ireland scratched their heads, threw a few more brands on the fire and told the foreigner “Sorry, Patrick. Still don’t get it. It’s either three or one. You can’t have it both ways.”
At which point Patrick leaned down, plucked a shamrock, and held it aloft. “Look!” he shouted “This is one shamrock, right? But it is a single shamrock that has three leaves! The Holy Trinity is like the shamrock.”
The native Irish conferred quietly and decided this man was mad as a March hare – three Gods were like three shamrock leaves? – but felt it best to humour him. “Right, boss – you’ve cracked it for us now. The scales have fallen from our eyes. We understand your Trinity thing completely – good work! We’ve all decided to become Christians. Thanks loads.”
And they did. In return for which, if we’re to believe legend, St Patrick toured around Ireland being irascible, picking quarrels with anyone who so much as looked sideways at him. We, in contrast, made him our native saint, set aside a day especially dedicated to him, called our children after him, and held/hold thousands of parades in his honour. Not to mention the excessive drinking. Which is what makes us the most accommodating, considerate, tactful, tolerant-of-foreigners people that ever existed on God’s green earth. Patrick got one very soft posting for his ministry.
Shona Lá duine Fhéile Pádraig!
Wonderful, Jude.
Thank you, John…
Apparently he didn’t rid Ireland of snakes. In accordance with Vatican protocol, he simply moved them to a parish where no one knew their background….
Or sent them to distant parts of the British Protestant Empire with the unfortunate children for a bit of sexual abuse.
not a bit of wonder the had to keep him in chains.did you ever visit buckna.
Yes, but Buckna didn’t exist when St. Patrick was around, so that poor hamlet can’t be held responsible for making him want to flee Ireland asap. But if you do park your car in the latter place today you’ll be guaranteed free coffee, tea and food handed out by the local Presbyterian Church and you’ll certainly need it as it’s blowing a gale, lashing with rain and Slemish is completely invisible behind a cloak of cloud.
I suppose every nation wants to have a day were they celebrate their national culture/character and St Patrick’s day serves that purpose for Ireland.
It’s not unique of course, the Scots have Burns night on the 25th of January (my birthday) and the French have Bastille day. The Dutch also have a day called Kings day were Amsterdam is a sea of orange to celebrate their royal family the House of Orange. It’s essentially just another day of national celebration.
St Patrick’s is a great day for sport with events such as the schools cup finals held annually. I’m heading to Down Royal to the horses this year but unfortunately the weather may not be playing ball with me.
O well, of to the pub it’ll be then.
Sona lá fhéile Pádraig
Happy St Patrick’s day folks.
Joe Bloggs, you just can’t resist the snide remarks even when the post is meant to be humourous…………………………..tells a lot about you though……………..
Bridget, my remark was meant to be humourous….maybe it is the way you read it?
if frank carson had a cracked that.they would have bin clapping..
absolutely humourless JB, au contraire, insulting, maybe it is the way you tell them……………
OK, Bridget, I’ll bite. Exactly who do you think this is insulting to and why? Are YOU insulted by it? If so, why?
Joe, your jibe would have been funny to anyone who can take a lighthearted attitude of paedophilia by priests (or anyone else), but, while I don’t think it funny, you are certainly right to take any dig you wish at those clerical abusers, who were protected for years by their superiors – and when I say superiors, it goes right to the Popes who allowed it free rein!
sherdy – it wasn’t meant to be a rib tickler….a dig certainly. Is gallows humour in satire restricted I wonder? It isn’t exactly explicit….are people annoyed about another reptilian reference I wonder?
I think that the Irish already understood the concept of trinity before the arrival of Patrick.
I always though the concept of the Trinity was a mystery – maybe the pre-Patrick Irish were even smarter than I thought…
There are some who say that it was downhill all the way for Ireland following the introduction of Christianity 😉
Lá Féile Pádraig shona daoibh go léir!
Back pushing that Tuatha Dé Danaan propaganda I see. How you can stand to back those settler-colony imperialists, I’ll never know.
I hear St P. had a mighty tasty goat, at least that’s what the Fingalers claim. Hmm, maybe that’s how the place got its name?
Mean spirited, Joe Bloggs at the very least. Just a pity you feel the need.
I genuinely didn’t think this joke would offend anyone and that most people would agree that the actions of the Catholic church that are the inference of the joke are disgraceful to most people and worthy of our derision and scorn.
Clearly not. Boy did they do a number on you….
All organisations hid abusers. Why pretend the Catholic church is worse?
What did St Patrick say when he was driving the snakes out of Ireland? “Are you alright in the back there lads?”
Joe Bloggs, this is the most mean-spirited thing you could ever say. You know full well that St Patrick would have spoken Latin and then learnt Gaelic. Not ENGLISH. This joke is proof that an Irish language act is needed now! Also, St Patrick drove a motor car. Motor cars are a British invention that have been forced upon the native Irish and this is just further proof that we need a motorway from Derry to Dublin. St Patrick is our saint and don’t you dare make jokes about him. The Brits are all bastards and not nice at all like the Irish and those brave misunderstood chaps in the IRA who never did anything wrong…yawn, yawn, yawn.
A lot of people on here need to lighten up….
I see now why you took the name of the commonest English person for your pen name. You’re trying too hard.
I could put it into Irish if you like? (Although I might struggle with Bloggs…like Miller, it doesn’t really translate).
How about Seosamh Ni Blogghhs?
(FYI – name nothing to do with the English….think about what are you reading….a “BLO….” you can do it fio!)
Ní indicates feminine. I’m sorry for being so hard on you. Btw, you’re not blogging you’re posting.
Joe is short for Josephine, so that’s cool. I blog(g) elsewhere under the same name.
It was less the tactful Irish and more the tactile English, Esteemed Blogmeister, whch one mainly thinks of on this day of days between the Ides and the Statesides of March.
On March 17, 1970 a great hurling matach was arranged in Kwara State, Nigeria betwen 11 Irishmen and 11 Englishmen.
A Cork engineer who had brought a camán in his luggage stopped producition in the local Tate and Lyle Factory and got his work force to fashiion 30 hurley sticks based on the prototype.(Allowing for breakages). The wood was not ash.
A tennis ball served as a sliotar.
The referee was the austere Mister Onigbinde, the games master at the Teacher Training College, the venue of the game. He was dressed in the full canonicals of a FIFA referee. The previous week he had officiated at a World Cup qualifier game in Cairo, between Egypt and Tunisia.
At first a few local villagers in their Agbadas tentatviely made their way to pitchside. They were all of a male persuasion. The women continued to undulate too and fro along the nearby trails which led to the wells or the fields, balancing vessels of water or yams on their stately heads.
Once the word spread of the ferocity on view on the field of play the crowd gradually swelled till it numbered a couple of hundred by the final whistle.
The ferocity was provided almost entirely by the English side. This was down mainly to their homeric ignorance of the game, its rules, its ethos, its history, its culture, its speed, its romance, its mythology, its differential calculus. Possibly due to the fact that none of them had ever seem a game prior to 17/3/1970.
Each member of the English team, without exception, held his improvised camán in his grip, known to all teaching golf pros at driving rancges, as: the dreaded butcher’s grip.
They seemed imbued with the idea that the basic hurling stroke was not the puck but the chop.
While all the Irish players survived to survive another day, just about, the same could not be said of the 30 hurleys used by both teams : only seven or so in total survived. The fact than the local wood from which they were fashioned was not ash or its equivalent, only tells part of the story. The ferocity of the Saxon with camán in hand was the stuff of which Ivan the Terrible would have approved.
Just as well Kitson never packed the low-intensity Guide to Hurling in his kit-bag. Otherwise, the depredations visited upon both sides of the Black Sow’s Dyke by Her Madge’s Badges might well have increased by a factor of 6 if not 26.
PS Some quarter of a century or so later, The Perkin’s inner couch potato almost fell to the boudoir floor while watching a televised friendly soccer game in Dublin between Nigeria and the ROI. This happened when the camera zeoed in on the Bainisteoiir of Team Nigteria:
-None other than the austere Mister Onigbinde, former gamesmaster and one-time hurling referee.
Being fair to Billy he’s correct, our Parish borders Moygashel.
I thought Joe Bloggs’so remark quite funny and not really offensive.
“Apparently he didn’t rid Ireland of snakes. In accordance with Vatican protocol, he simply moved them to a parish where no one knew their background”
You find this funny do you Brian?
Jude – it looks like your friend Nelson is a St Patrick myth buster too!
http://theministerspen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/patrick-apostle-of-ulster.html
It’s best to remember at all times that snakes never , ever……. in all the vastness of time ……, ever existed in Ireland at any moment since the seas receded and exposed the beautiful little island.
“Snakes evolved from their lizard forbearers about 100 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, about the same time that Tyrannosaurus rex appeared. At this point Ireland was completely underwater.
During the Cenozoic era, 65 million years ago, the world began to dry out and vast grasslands came to dominate much of the northern hemisphere. Predecessors of modern boas and pythons were widespread throughout this area about 50 million years ago with vipers and cobras following about 25 million years ago.
Now snakes are found in deserts, grasslands, forests and mountains virtually everywhere in the world. Everywhere, that is, except New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, Antarctica and, of course, Ireland.”
The little slithery guys have never figured out how to cross the oceans and apparently do not fancy the idea at all.
There are a few snakes found in Ireland from time to time, the current SOS being one of them
I see this as a positive thing Joe.
I agree that blue was traditionally the colour for Catholics in Ireland.
The green for the Irish was in fact more attributed to Protestants who were the original republicans.
How do things get so muddled?
Aye Joe but the myth will persist and you’ll just have to live with it I suppose. Happy St. Patrick’s day.