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 St. Patrick
Let's start off with the old fellow himself ...
 Patrick, Saint (389?-461?), called the Apostle of Ireland, Christian prelate. His birthplace is uncertain, but it was probably in southwestern Britain; his British name was Succat. At 16 years of age he was carried off by Irish marauders and passed his captivity as a herdsman near the mountain Slemish in county Antrim (as tradition has it) or in county Connacht (Connaught). The young herdsman saw visions in which he was urged to escape, and after six years of slavery he did so, to the northern coast of Gaul (now France). Ordained a priest, possibly by St. Germanus, at Auxerre, he returned to Ireland. Patrick was appointed, sometime after 431, successor to St. Palladius, first bishop of Ireland. Patrick concentrated on the west and north of Ireland. It is possible that he visited Rome and returned with relics. His reported use of the shamrock as an illustration of the Trinity led to its being regarded as the Irish national symbol. A strange chant of his, called the Lorica, is preserved in the Liber Hymnorum (Book of Hymns), and what purports to have been a handbell he used during Mass is shown in the National Museum, Dublin. His traditional feast day is March 17.
Celtic Cross
More heroism from the infamous personality ....
 In the 5th century AD Ireland’s Saint Patrick led the conversion of the Celts, the Iron Age invaders of Ireland, to Christianity. Although Christian churches and monasteries were founded for the Celtic people, many of the converts retained much of their Druidic religion. This Celtic cross near the Shannon River in Ireland, with its elaborate stylized relief of earth gods and woodland spirits, illustrates how the Celtic people preserved many of their Druidic beliefs.
Scandal?
However, trouble is amiss as historians disagree on some finer points ...
St Patrick ... "a man historians will agree was not named Patrick, was not Irish, did not drive the snakes from Ireland, did not bring Christianity to Ireland, and was not born March 17".
Closer to Reality?
The legend of the Blarney Stone ...
 Ireland's Blarney Castle is completed by Cormac Laidhiv McCarthy, lord of Muskerry. Set in a turret below the battlements is a limestone rock that is called the Blarney Stone and that is reputed to confer eloquence on anyone who hangs head downward to kiss it.
Have you kissed the Blarney Stone?
Finally ... Some Gaelic Rhetoric
Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside;
It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam,
through lands and waters wide.
William Allingham (1824-89), Irish poet, diarist.
Adieu to Belashanny.
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British author.
Ballad of the White Horse.
We Irish are too poetical to be poets;
we are a nation of brilliant failures,
but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author.
Said to poet W. B. Yeats, Christmas 1888.
Quoted in: Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde, ch. 11 (1987).
Other Sites
- A Wee Bit O' Fun
Some of the above information recreated from Dennis Dufficy's Home Page
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