As we all know, St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland – I’ve sent enough St. Patrick Day’s cards with pictures of the Saint at the wheel of a car, literally driving a carload of squirming reptiles. Of course, soulless skeptical types (like me) have been known to blame climate conditions during the ice ages, but these people have no romance in their souls.
It’s not just snakes, apparently. There’s only one reptile held to be native to Ireland – the viviparous lizard. Not clear why it escapoed the same fate as other reptiles in the Emerald Isle, or why nobody mentions reptiles other than snakes
There are marine turtles that frequent the waters off Ireland, but they don’t come ashore. The Pond Slider turtle is thought to be a recent introduction, not a native species
Finally, although Ireland has no snakes, it does have the Slow Worm, a legless lizard I’d not heard of previously. Although legless, it has non-snake features like ears and eyelids. It’s not native, either, but thought to be a recent addition, and it only lives in one confined area, the Burren in Western Ireland.
But it’s the closest thing Ireland has to a snake. So if you live in Ireland and have a real snake Jones, you can always go looking for a Slow Worm.
Hopefully, no one will try and introduce Burmese Pythons to Ireland, like they have in Florida. In one Frederick Forsyth short story, There Are No Snakes in Ireland (in the collection No Comebacks), an Indian student inadvertently introduces a poisonous snake into Ireland, but it seems a highly improbable situation.
Since you seem to know a bit about the topic, would you be able to speak to the two theories of which I am aware as to the possible reality behind the “driving out the snakes”?
This is, of course, after one first acknowledges that climate, as you mentioned, was most likely responsible.
I have read that the legend resulted from the introduction of a ban on execution by snake pit. (The hapless victim was tossed into a hole where a large number of venomous snakes were kept)
I’ve also read, less credibly, that druids of the Irish variety were symbolically linked to and referred to as "adders’ and that the legend is a result of St. Pat’s influence eventually establishing a competing religion which took their adherents, thus driving them out. As this source also held that these same druids were seen as “salmon” I remain a bit skeptical. One animal totem as an easily recognized shorthand I could buy but two different ones seems a bit much.
And the Piper Cub was very excited by the coins in his boots, left by the leprechauns overnight.
I hadn’t reminded him that today was St Patricks, but Mrs Piper mentioned it at breakfast. Right away he went zipping to his boots, and sure enough, a loonie in each.
I’ve never heard this one before.
I knew that leprechauns were held to be cobblers*, but I’d never heard of a tradition of leaving money in kids’ shoes on St. Patrick’s day. Is this an Irish thing, or a Canadian thing, or just a private, family thing?
*apparently due to some folk etymology that connects the word “leprechaun” to something that means 'cobbler".
All I know is that when eating snakes, I spit the snake pits out.
I’ve heard the story that St. Patrick’s being said to drive the “snakes” out actually referred to him driving out the pagans, but I’ve never heard or read anything corroborating this, and it feels like a folk legend/rationalization to me. Of course, I don’t know how far back the “St. Patrick driving the snakes out” thing goes, either, or who first reported it, so we might have a case of one folk legend commenting on another here.
The story I heard is that the legend of St. Paddy and the snakes refers to the spread of Catholicism putting an end to the worship of the pagan god Crom Cruach.
In pre-Roman colonial times, Celtic settlers from Eastern Europe wended their way through Europe, eventually reaching the British Isles and Ireland. They brought their pagan gods with them, including one very important deity Crom Cruach. Celtic pagan religion has lots of snake imagery and Crom himself is often depicted as a mammoth snake or worm (as in “the Lair of the White Worm” by Stoker or “Die Vermis Mysteriis” referenced in Lovecraft stories.)
Supposedly, St. Patrick didn’t so much drive actual snakes out of Eire as he did Celtic paganism that heavily referenced snakes and a particular snake-like deity.
Evacuation Day is a surprisingly regionally limited holiday, not celebrated throught Massachusetts, but only in Suffolk County (which includes Boston), and, oddly, the public schools of Somerville, MA (which is in Middlesex County), which are closed today.
Evacuation Day marks the day that George Washington drove the British out of Boston, as St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. (Not to compare the British to snakes, but we were fighting them at the time).
This was achieved almost bloodlessly, by the incredible efforts of Henry Knox and his men, who dragged the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston in the freakin’ winter, over frozen lakes. The cannon were set up in secret overnight and dug in (no easy task – the ground was frozen solid) so that the British in Boston were faced with a fait accompli. They were able to arrange a departure unhindered in return for not burning the town. One of the more amazing and clever maneuvers of the entire Revolutionary War.
Of course, most people think we’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. At least for Evacuation Day you don’t have to wear green or kiss a rock.
But the association with shoes is longstanding, pre-dating the more modern images of leprechauns, and isn’t based on a folk etymology. They were solitary fairies who fixed or made shoes.
From the same cite I think you’ve used (Wikipedia) comes this:
I’ve encountered the claim that “Leprechaun” itself derives from “Half brogue”, not merely that spelling. That would make the image of leprechauns as cobblers squarely a matter of folk etymology.
According to the Wikipedia page you linked to, Crom Cruach’s ritual image was described as a figure of gold and silver, surrounded by 12 bronze attendants. (Which suggests a solar deity, a type not usually associated with snake imagery in European mythology.) No mention of snakes.
My own WAG, and that’s all it is, is that Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland is some medieval monk’s metaphor for establishing Christianity on the island.
CalMeacham is spot on, barring my mild doubts about the shoe issue. In Irish, “leath” is used to mean “one” for items that typically come in pairs, so “one shoe.” Dinneen’s dictionary lists " leaṫ-ḃróg " as meaning “one of a pair of shoes,” and the idiom " tá leaṫ-ḃróg aige leis " [lit. “is half-shoe at-him with-him,” slightly less literally “he has one shoe for him”] as meaning “he favours him.” Note that the bh (ḃ) is /v/, not /p/, though I confess I’m not sure what effect the combination thbh has. Dinneen lists the entry “leipreaċán” separately as “a pigmy, a sprite, a leprechaun.” As a folk etymology, it’s not very close: one is more like “letvrog(-an)” and the other like “leprekhan.”
