3/17 - St. Paddy's Day - A Primer
~~ St. Pat
Ye Basics:
He wasn't Irish, he was "Romano-British"
He wasn't Catholic, they weren't around yet
He's not officially canonized, either (added on edit)
His real name is unknown, probably not Patrick
(Patrick, fwiw is a corruption of the Irish Pádraig)
Nobody knows precisely where or when he was born, or to whom
Nobody is sure exactly when he died, either
There never were any fookin snakes in Ireland
Other useful information
Saint Pat's Day in the US is amateur hour, a good day to stay safely inside at home and avoid all the fratboys out getting bombed on cheap booze.
Green Beer:
True Green Beer:
Green Beer is beer that has undergone its primary fermentation but has yet to undergo a period of conditioning before packaging. It is perhaps “drinkable” but not ready to drink.
Beerandbrewing.com
St. Pat's Day Green Beer: This is generally Buttwiper or some similar obnoxious beverage dosed with chemical food coloring to turn it green. It is an abomination and no self-respecting Irish person would drink it. (That is also largely true of Buttwiper without food coloring, but that is another matter.)
Saint Patrick, green beer
Comments
Beg to differ with the name question
People keep getting that ass-backward. "Patrick" (or Pádraig, if you insist) is an "Irish" name BECAUSE OF Saint Patrick. He really did have a Romano-British name: "Patricius", meaning "patrician".
He eventually became Irish by choice, after having lived and worked there for many years - not the first and far from the last person to do so. (More than a few of the "great Irish families" were actually Anglo-Irish - originally Norman conquerors, who came to feel they had more in common with their subjects in Ireland than their peers in England.)
He was literate, and some writings of his that have survived show a feisty, even fiery personality.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
The information I have is that his original given
name was never known with any certainty. He was, in his youth, kidnapped into Ireland and put to work, had a vision and escaped back to England and got some further education becoming a cleric, and then returned to Ireland for the purpose of converting them all. In his writings, he self named himself Patricious, but this could actually be merely an honorific. Assorted hagiographies give him various other names, all similarly honorific or denotative.
All the same, you are correct, padraig is from patricious and not vice versa. Thanks.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
If he says it's his name, it's his name.
Your name is what you answer to, and he answered to "Patricius". And as far as I'm concerned that settles it. (The first three words of his "Confession" are "Ego Patricius peccator", "I, Patrick, sinner" - a fairly strong argument that he was not using an honorific.)
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I'd like to add that quite a few early saints
were never formally canonized by any Pope either - that was a 12th century and later development, and many earlier names were simply "grandfathered in".
By the 16th century Patrick was not only generally accepted as a Catholic saint, in Catholic theology he is said to have held the keys to Purgatory (and Shakespeare knew this, which is why Hamlet invokes him in connection with his father's fate).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I don't often...
Hey EL! I don't often think 'green beer', but when I do, it is on this day.
March 17, 1985. We were living near Boston, drove to somewhere on Cape Cod, flew to Nantucket on first flight of day, rented a car, and spent 8 hours driving around looking for the Jackdaw that was there. Saw it at last light, distantly through telescope only, with Crows.
Set a world record that day which I am fairly certain still stands. Nantucket is about 50 square miles of land, 6 x 8 miles or so. According to the car rental place no one had ever driven 256 miles on the island in one day. In fact apparently, no one had gotten to triple digits.
Pikers. They had to send another person out to get 'the correct' odometer reading. And then the manager. Perhaps they had never encountered a birder like me. When I say I covered a spot, I really covered it. Barely caught the last flight back to the mainland. Ahhhh, fond St. Paddys Day memories, and a 'lower 48' Jackdaw.
have a good one!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Awesome sighting. n/t
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --