Myths

• St. Patrick was Irish. — Not exactly. No one knows for certain where St. Patrick was born, but it was most likely in southwestern Britain. He was the son of a low-level Roman official and is more accurately called a Celtic Briton.

• St. Patrick was the first Christian missionary to Ireland. — Though he was certainly the most successful, St. Patrick was not the first. Evidence exists of missionaries traveling through Ireland in the 4th century. The best known before St. Patrick was Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine in 431 A.D. Many scholars believe some of the deeds and accomplishments attributed to St. Patrick were actually the work of Palladius, though some contend Patrick and Palladius were one and the same.

• St. Patrick used the shamrock to teach about Christianity. — One of the most enduring tales about St. Patrick is that he used the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to the pagan Celts of Ireland. The legend is unverifiable, since Patrick doesn’t mention it in his writings, and in fact that use of the shamrock could have been a Christianized version of an earlier Celtic tradition.

• St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. — There’s only one problem with this story: Ireland never had any snakes.

• The annual St. Patrick’s Day parade is an Irish tradition. — Actually, the parade originated in Manhattan. Though honoring the date of his death, according to tradition, March 17, c. 493, was observed in old Ireland as a solemn religious event; the first recorded true parade took place in 1766 in New York when local military units, including some Irish soldiers in the British army, marched at dawn from house to house of the leading Irish citizens of the city.

• Leprechauns are cute little elves. — Drop that picture in your mind of the little guy on the Lucky Charms cereal box. Leprechauns were grumpy, alcoholic, insufferable elves in the employ of Irish fairies. They made shoes for fairies and guarded their treasure, which, to the leprechauns’ eternal frustration, was revealed occasionally to mortals by a rainbow.

• The “luck of the Irish” refers to an abundance of good fortune long enjoyed by the Irish. — Really? What sort of luck is it that brings about 1,000 years of invasion, colonization, starvation and mass emigration? This term actually has a happier, American origin, deriving from the gold and silver rush years of the 1800s, when many of the famous and most successful miners were of Irish and Irish-American birth.

Source: http://hnn.us (History News Network), by Edward T. O’Donnell

Facts

St. Patrick was a Romano-Briton and Christian missionary. He is the most generally recognized patron saint of Ireland.

When he was about 16, he was captured from Britain by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After entering the church, he returned to Ireland as an ordained bishop, but little is known about the places where he worked.

By the 8th century, he had become the patron saint of Ireland. The dates of Patrick’s life are uncertain, but it is believed he was a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the 5th century. St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is celebrated in and outside Ireland, as both a liturgical and non-liturgical holiday.

Source: www.wikipedia.org