Remembering the Snakes in Ireland

I know I haven’t posted in forever - but I also know that no one probably actually reads this blog, so I’m not completely concerned. My attention has been held by work and some personal questions about my ’spiral path’ that came to a head with the discovery of the well written and often educational blog Native Appropriations (I highly recommend checking it out, regardless of what ethnicity you may claim).

Still, it being St. Patrick’s day here in the US, I felt I should recognize the history behind this holiday and it’s relation to my current leanings.

While in America it’s a holiday for vaguely celebrating (for most Americans, at least) Irish heritage via drinking, consuming boiled beef, and excessive wearing of the color green, it is important to remember that this is a Catholic Saint’s holiday - St. Patrick. He is venerated for having ‘driven the snakes out of Ireland.’ What a lot of people don’t realize is that those ‘snakes’ were actually heretical or pagan practices and beliefs held by the natives of Ireland, doggedly oppressed or co-opted by the Christian church in order to convert the pagan populace.

While the years of his birth and death are still debated, and records confuse whether or not the man ever actually existed (or was even multiple figures sort of crammed into one) If historians have it right, the man who became St. Patrick actually started his life as Maewyn (or Gaewyn, depending on your source), himself a pagan. In his teens he was sold into slavery by raiders who had taken him from his village, and during his six years of slavery began having spiritual dreams, one of which is alleged to have shown him how to escape and led him to seek service to the church.

    While he may have established schools and churches, according to legend he was just as willing to raise a hand to bless and aid as he was to curse and destroy. He did so in the name of driving out the pagan beliefs of the country and while I have yet to find a source to confirm it, I keep seeing again and again that he admitted to being 'forced' to:

"…curse their fertile lands, so that they became dreary bogs; to curse their rivers, so that they produced no fish; to curse their very kettles, so that with no amount of fire and patience could they ever be made to boil; and, as a last resort, to curse the Druids themselves, so that the earth opened and swallowed them up."

In the name of converting them to Christianity, of course - since much of the population initially resisted conversion, even under penalty of death. He even altered pagan symbols in his efforts at winning converts.

The three leafed clover, the Shamrock, was already a sacred symbol when he arrived: it symbolized the Morrigan, a goddess with three aspects. He used it instead as a symbol of the Christian trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We remember him on his believed death date, March 17 - and even after his death, his legend hid Pagan beliefs behind the stories of the Church. His funerary shroud is said to have been made by St. Brigit - the Christian colored version the Celtic Goddess of the same name.

From what I’ve encountered, there are a handful of stories describing St. Patrick ‘driving out the snakes.’ Among others, one involves drumming, another involves leaving a single snake, and the last involves tricking a snake into a box. The drumming story involves a sermon on a hill (yay Christ imagery!) and an angel coming down from heaven to repair the drum which Patrick was using to drive out the snakes. In the second story, an old snake living in Lake Dilveen was so difficult to drive out that the Bishop let him be and promised to return on Monday to finish him off. According to legend, every Monday the snake rises up to look about for the long dead bishop and declare, “it’s been a long Monday, Patrick.” The last story I’ve mentioned has St. Patrick presenting a box for a snake to get into so that he can be sealed away. When the serpent says it is too small for him to fit, St. Patrick convinces him to prove it is too small by climbing in anyway. When the snake does, the box is closed around him and cast into the sea.

Also, put on some pants.

Remembering that these ‘snakes’ represent the nature worshipping people and their beliefs, many of the almost whimsical legends about St. Patrick driving out the snakes become a bit morbid.

While pagan civilizations throughout history actively oppressed and executed Christians (remember the early Romans?) there aren’t a lot of holidays celebrating the act - and St. Patrick’s day is all about a man who led a crusade to convert (often forcibly) all manner of Irish people, and contributed to the murder of Irish Pagans and Druids, men, women and children alike.

While looking for information on this holiday, I stumbled on a facebook post comparing celebration of St. Patrick’s day to commemorating the death of any major Bishop in a position of power during the Spanish Inquisition. A different situation - but not by much.

I can’t speak for the Irish - my step-grandmother’s family on one side can claim Irish heritage, and it definitely influenced some or my memories of my childhood with her. But I can speak as someone who has been exploring a decidedly pagan path, and my take on the holiday is this:

While I’ll probably enjoy a beer tonight (I just turned 21, after all), I won’t be raising my glass in the name of St. Patrick, once Maewyn. Rather, I’ll be celebrating the approach of spring, the celebration of good times with friends, and the sprawl and mingle of all manner of cultures with one another. I’ll be remembering the culture, history and people wiped out and hidden during the spread of Christianity through Ireland and Scotland, and the many generations after. Or, should I say, incompletely wiped out: the ‘snake’ at Lake Dilveen might approve.

Overall, though, I'll be celebrating. We all want an excuse to have a good time, and I'm not going to get high-and-mighty or defensive over this holiday. There is so little known about true druid traditions (which should say something about how effective the Church was in its conversions), and most of what exists today under the term of 'celtic' or 'druid' is either reconstruction or pure fantasy. While I try not make light of the oppression and murder of any people, It's hard to defend respect for traditions that can no longer be verified as traditional, and no matter what, this is a Christian holiday. In the end, what I've learned through my experience on this side of the ocean is that, what with Shamrock shakes and green beer, it's best to not take it too seriously and just try to have fun. After all, if the majority of the people this holiday is 'holy' to don't treat is as such -  should I?

"Everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's day!" Even those from a galaxy far, far away.