St. Patrick’s Day

Two writings are accepted as Patrick’s own: the Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls their genuineness “unquestionable.” In the Confessio he says “My name is Patrick,” says that his father Calpornius was a deacon and his grandfather Potitus a priest, and says he was “about sixteen” when he was taken captive. The Catholic Encyclopedia says Irish raiders carried him off, that he tended his master’s flocks for six years, and that he then escaped.

Wikipedia describes him as a fifth-century Romano-British missionary and bishop, from a family of Romanised Britons; his father was a decurion, a town councillor. The Confessio also speaks of his work as a bishop. He also speaks of “this faith in the Trinity,” so he held the Christian doctrine of the Trinity that the Quran rejects (see the Islamic position below).

17 March is the traditional date of his death, and 461 is the traditional year. Wikipedia reports that the annals give a variety of dates: 457, when “the elder Patrick” is said to have died, which may refer to Palladius; and some modern historians accept about 460, but scholars of early Irish history tend to prefer about 493. The annals also date his arrival in Ireland to 432, but they were compiled long after his death, and Wikipedia says 432 was probably chosen to play down Palladius and play up Patrick.

The earliest lives of Patrick are by Muirchú and Tírechán, written in the late seventh century, more than a century after the traditional date of his death. Both relied on a lost earlier work, the Book of Ultán. They mix memory with legend: Patrick’s contest with Lóegaire’s druids at Tara, the Easter fire at Slane, and several other miracles come from them, not from Patrick’s own writings.

The Catholic Encyclopedia tells the Tara story as history, within an account that has Patrick landing in Ireland probably in 433. We treat it as hagiography, which means a saint’s life written to honour him.

Wikipedia says the Irish in Europe were already keeping 17 March as a kind of national day in the ninth and tenth centuries. In the early 1600s the feast was placed in the Church calendar. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that Luke Wadding, an Irish Franciscan in Rome, kept the feast every year with great solemnity, and that “it is due to his influence, as member of the commission for the reform of the Breviary” that the feast was inserted on 17 March in the calendar of the Universal Church.

The date is not settled. Popular accounts give 1631 and credit Pope Urban VIII with adding the feast. The Wild Geese, a historical profile of Wadding, and the National Catholic Reporter credit Wadding’s lobbying; one study we found places his work on the commission between 1629 and 1631. We cannot confirm the year from a primary source.

The first written mention of Irish people wearing the shamrock on this day is in 1681, by the English traveller Thomas Dineley. He wrote that the Irish “were crosses in their hatts, some of pinns, some of green ribbon, and the vulgar superstitiously wear shamroges, 3 leav’d grass.” Wikipedia notes that Dineley says nothing about Patrick using it to teach the Trinity.

The story that Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity first appears in writing in 1726, in the botanist Caleb Threlkeld’s book. Threlkeld calls it a “current tradition,” and adds, “However that be, when they wet their Seamar-oge, they often commit excess in liquor, which is not a right keeping of a day to the Lord.” The Confessio does not mention the shamrock.

The story says Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. National Geographic quotes Nigel Monaghan of the National Museum of Ireland: “At no time has there ever been any suggestion of snakes in Ireland, so [there was] nothing for St. Patrick to banish.” Scientists put it down to the ice age and the sea. Wikipedia adds that Solinus noted Ireland’s lack of snakes as early as the third century, that the Life of Saint Columba already has another Irish saint banishing snakes, and that the earliest writing about Patrick doing it is Jocelin of Furness in the late twelfth century.

Scholars often read the story as an allegory in which snakes stand for paganism, which Patrick is said to have ended (National Geographic). That is an interpretation, not a record. We mark it as such.

Wikipedia says the Friendly Brothers of St Patrick, a fraternity founded about 1750, adopted green. The Order of St Patrick, founded in 1783, adopted blue instead, which is why blue came to be linked with Saint Patrick. In the 1790s the United Irishmen adopted green, and the song “The Wearing of the Green” belongs to that period.

Historian J. Michael Francis of the University of South Florida found Spanish gunpowder-expenditure records for St. Augustine, Florida, for 1600 and 1601. They show residents processing through the streets for the feast of San Patricio with cannon fire. USF names the Irish priest Ricardo Artur (Richard Arthur) as the likely source of the devotion. HISTORY dates the first recorded parade to 17 March 1601.

The Charitable Irish Society of Boston was founded on 17 March 1737 by 26 men of Ulster birth or ancestry (Massachusetts Historical Society). It was a society dinner and meeting, not a parade. In New York, the parade organisers date the first parade to 1762 and say Irish members of the British Army marched. The New-York Historical says the earliest recorded observance was in 1756 and was not a parade, and that the first account that resembles a parade is from 1766.

In Ireland itself the first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in Waterford in 1903, which Wikipedia says was hundreds of years after the first parade in North America.

Threlkeld complained in 1726 that people “often commit excess in liquor” on the day (card 5). Wikipedia says the Lenten restrictions on fasting and drinking alcohol were historically lifted for the day, which encouraged its tradition of revelry, and it describes the custom of “drowning the shamrock,” in which a shamrock is put in the bottom of a cup that is then filled with drink and drunk as a toast. In Ireland, the Intoxicating Liquor Act 1927 made it unlawful to sell intoxicating liquor on Christmas Day, Good Friday or Saint Patrick’s Day (section 2). Secondary sources say the St. Patrick’s Day closure was ended by the Intoxicating Liquor Act 1960, and give the year as 1960 or 1961.

The United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that, in the St. Patrick’s Day period of 2020, more than a third (36%) of crash fatalities involved a drunk driver, and that 287 lives were lost in drunk-driving crashes in the St. Patrick’s Day periods from 2016 to 2020.

Patrick was Romano-British. He was taken to Ireland as a captive and later returned as a missionary (cards 1 and 3).

In the Confessio he calls himself Patrick. The seventh-century lives list other names, among them Succetus (Tírechán) and Sochet (Muirchú). The two-part “Maewyn Succat” is a later tradition. We did not find “Maewyn” in the early sources.

See card 2. The day is traditional, the year is traditional, and scholars of early Irish history lean toward about 493.

Urban VIII was pope from 1623 to 1644 (Wikipedia). The Catholic Encyclopedia credits Wadding’s influence as a member of the breviary reform commission, not a personal act of the pope. Popular accounts give 1631; other sources give other years. See card 4.

The story is first written in 1726 (card 5). The Confessio does not mention the shamrock. Dineley’s 1681 description of the day does not mention the Trinity.

Ireland never had snakes to drive out (card 6). The idea that the story stands for ending paganism is an interpretation, not a fact.

Green was taken up by the Friendly Brothers (about 1750) and the United Irishmen (1790s), and the Order of St Patrick chose blue in 1783 (card 7). Neither colour is attested for the saint himself in his own writings.

It is documented that on the day the Lenten fast was relaxed for the faithful and that men went drinking after Mass (card 9). It is not documented that the relaxation caused the drinking culture, and Threlkeld was already complaining of excess in 1726. We call the causal link a proposed explanation.

In 1737 the Charitable Irish Society was founded in Boston by 26 men of Ulster birth or ancestry (card 8). We found no source that calls it a parade or says soldiers held it. The earliest recorded St. Patrick’s procession in the Americas is the Spanish one at St. Augustine in 1600 and 1601, and even that comes from gunpowder records.

The parade organisers give 1762 and say Irish members of the British Army marched. The New-York Historical gives 1756 as the earliest recorded observance, not a parade, and 1766 for the first account that resembles one. We leave the date open and note the soldiers as the organisers’ claim.

HISTORY says St. Patrick’s Day parades and feasting on corned beef and cabbage were American creations, not Irish ones. Wikipedia puts the first parade in Ireland at Waterford in 1903.

HISTORY describes the customary St. Patrick’s Day meal in Ireland as Irish bacon and cabbage, and says that parades and feasting on corned beef and cabbage were American creations, not Irish ones. The Smithsonian says that in Ireland, when people could afford any meat at all, they ate salted pork or bacon, that the Irish relied mainly on the potato, and that the meal eaten on the day in Ireland is lamb or bacon.

The Smithsonian’s account of the change is as follows. After the Great Famine, Irish immigrants settled mostly in New York City and earned more than they had in Ireland. With more money for food they could afford meat, and “instead of their beloved bacon, the Irish began eating beef,” namely corned beef. It adds that they “almost solely bought their meat from kosher butchers,” and that what we think of as Irish corned beef is “actually Jewish corned beef thrown into a pot with cabbage and potatoes.” The reason it gives is that the immigrants could now afford beef, not that pork was too expensive, and we found no source for a “pork was too expensive” explanation.

The earliest known reference to the leprechaun is in the medieval tale Echtra Fergus mac Léti, an eighth-century text, in which Fergus, King of Ulster, is dragged toward the sea by three lúchorpáin, usually explained as “small bodies.” Wikipedia presents other etymologies as proposals only. We found no good source for a Tuatha Dé Danann origin, so we do not rely on it. The green coat and the link to St. Patrick’s Day are later.

The story of his contest with Lóegaire’s druids at Tara comes from the seventh-century lives (card 3). The link some writers draw between the druids and the snakes, so that the banished snakes stand for the druids, is an interpretation by later readers, not something either life says.