A boy kidnapped by pirates
PATRICK was not Irish. He was born in Roman Britain in the late 300s or 400s, somewhere near the west coast, the son of a Christian official. When he was about sixteen, Irish raiders kidnapped him and carried him across the sea to IRELAND, where he was made to work as a shepherd for six years. He later wrote that he prayed constantly on the hillsides. He escaped, found a ship home, trained as a priest and, remarkably, chose to go back to the country where he had been a slave, to spread Christianity.
Unusually for someone who lived so long ago, his own words survive: a short book called the Confession, written late in his life, in rough Latin he apologised for. He is thought to have died on 17 MARCH, and that became his feast day. Our saints page covers the patron saints of the other nations of the British Isles.
Shamrocks, snakes and a blue saint
A famous story says Patrick used a three-leafed SHAMROCK to explain the Christian idea of the Trinity, three persons in one God. The story was first written down more than a thousand years after he died, but the shamrock became Ireland's symbol anyway. The other famous legend, that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland, has a simple problem: there were never any snakes to drive out. Ireland was cut off by the sea after the last Ice Age before snakes could get there. Our reptiles page covers the snakes found everywhere else.
St Patrick was once linked with blue, not GREEN, and a shade called St Patrick's blue still appears on Irish state emblems. Green took over from the 1700s and 1800s, when it became the colour of the Irish nationalist movement and of the EMERALD Isle itself. The HARP, not the shamrock, is the official emblem of the Irish state, and it appears on Irish coins.
A parade in Florida and a green river
The first known St Patrick's Day PARADE was held not in Ireland but in the Spanish colony of St Augustine, in what is now Florida, around 1601, organised by an Irish priest. New York's parade began in 1762 and is now one of the biggest in the world. Since 1962 the city of Chicago has dyed its river bright green for the day. DUBLIN holds a huge FESTIVAL of its own, but in Ireland the day was for a long time mostly a quiet religious holiday.
In American schools, children who forget to wear green may get a PINCH, supposedly because the green makes you invisible to leprechauns.
Leprechauns and their gold
In Irish folklore, the LEPRECHAUN is a small, grumpy shoemaker who hides a POT OF GOLD, and if you catch one he must grant you three wishes or tell you where it is buried, though he will try every trick to escape. The pot is said to lie at the end of the RAINBOW, which is always out of reach.
Kissing a stone upside down
At Blarney Castle near Cork, visitors lean backwards over a long drop, holding an iron rail, to kiss the BLARNEY Stone, which is said to give the gift of the gab, a way with words. A LIMERICK, the five-line comic poem, shares its name with the Irish county and city. A JIG, a CLOVER, a CELTIC knot and a LUCKY day finish the grid.