Edinburgh looked just like we’d expect on 17 March: streets crowded with people in green, shamrock and Guinness paraphernalia as far as the eye can see. A load of good craic, of course. But as I spent my first Saint Patrick’s Day outside of Ireland, I couldn’t help but feel that something important was missing: a conversation about why we have this festival and what it really means for the Ireland of today.
Saint Patrick is celebrated for bringing Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century. Before him, the island followed a form of paganism – various deities were worshipped, often those with connections to nature (such as Brigid, the goddess of poetry and fertility, who was associated with water) and folk tales were passed down orally to explain why the world is the way it is. When Patrick, a British Christian and one of the first missionaries in Ireland, arrived, the nation was peacefully converted to Christianity. The population seemed receptive to Christian doctrine, and there are a number of possible reasons for this – perhaps certain elements of Christian teaching were easily compatible with, or similar to, the beliefs already held in Ireland. However Patrick did it, the island happily took up Christianity.
The repercussions of this are significant in Irish cultural history. Because of the country’s large-scale conversion, many indigenous religious beliefs died out. Some historians consider the famous myth of Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland to be an allegory for this. Ireland did not have snakes in the first place, but they could refer to the druid beliefs and pagan practices that disappeared upon Ireland’s conversion.
However, this makes Patrick sound more violent than he was, when in fact, many pre-existing pagan festivals and folklore stories survived and were adapted into Irish Christianity. For example, the folk tale of the goddess Brigid turned into the story of Saint Brigid, another of the three patron saints of Ireland whose feast day is still celebrated on 1 February. It’s great to hear that our indigenous traditions were to some extent preserved, but we also can’t deny the colonial undercurrent in reinventing traditional stories under Anglicised names.
An illustration of this can be found in the Sheela Na Gig (in Irish, Síle na gCíoch), a particular stone carving of a woman. In pagan Ireland, it was a symbol of fertility and a celebration of the female body, a lesson in how to give birth. However, the early Church colonised this art and instead used it as a symbol to oppress women, using the image as a warning against sexual sin. So although Patrick brought us a religion that undoubtedly brought joy and solace to many, we may lament the appearance of damaging attitudes towards women.
That’s the story of our Saint. However, as 17 March has become synonymous with celebrating Ireland, there are other parts of the country’s history we cannot ignore if we want to have a bit of craic. Many centuries after Saint Patrick, Ireland underwent further oppression at the hand of the British Empire. This period of colonial oppression was one of the darkest in Irish history; England occupied Ireland from the 12th century and exercised full control over it from the 17th Century up until 1922, when independence was finally achieved. The occupation was an incredibly violent one. The most notorious example of this was the forced starvation of the Irish people from 1845-52, when 1.5m people died and a further million fled the country. This is better known by the name of ‘The Great Famine,’ a disease which affected potato crops for several years.
A final example of the systematic oppression by Britain in Ireland was the attempted eradication of the Irish language, Gaeilge. Its usage was banned and children were punished for speaking it. There has since been a revival and a huge effort to keep the language being taught and spoken – but wouldn’t it be nice, though, if we didn’t have to fight for it at all?
In light of all of this, Saint Patrick’s Day should perhaps be celebrated in a way which not only celebrates Irishness but also recognises the importance of preserving its culture. Both folklore and Catholicism have been oppressed throughout history. It strikes me as deeply sad that outside of Ireland, the holiday is largely considered just a drinking holiday: I think that to celebrate Irishness in good conscience, to drink Guinness, dress green, and wear the shamrock, you must also care about our culture and about resisting oppression, no matter what form it comes in.
Image by Albane Mbow for The Student.