A great day indeed wherever the Irish are. Not just the New York parade but anywhere our people have gone, there will be celebrations. And isn't it good news that for the first time it will be a public holiday in the North. It's not a day for arguing, even though some of our more basic ideas about the saint have been challenged. Such as representing him in a picture or in stone as a modern Bishop topped with a mitre. (Mitres were a later introduction.) Or have him explain the Trinity with the three leaves of the shamrock. No banishing of snakes, we are told. And he didn't herd sheep on Slemish or climb Croaghpatrick. Joseph Duffy in a neat little book Patrick in his own words (Veritas 1975) gives 1681 as the exact year we have our earliest reference to the wearing of shamrock on The Day. And it was only in the next century, he writes, that the trend set in to give the saint's feast the gala atmosphere of Irish music and "greenery" which survives today, especially among Irish emigrants. (There's plenty around at home today - even increasing with the years, some might think.)
Frank O'Connor found, says Duffy, a whole conception of national identity signified by the late 18th century song, "The Wearing of the Green", "written, in pseudo-Irish dialect, probably by an Ulster Presbyterian and set to what seems to be an adaptation of a Scottish pibroch, is our real national anthem." A bit heavy-handed. Incidentally a reference to Patrick as the most common Christian name in Ireland seems to date from the 17th century. (Is Patrick top of the Christian names today? Doubtful.) Is there a parish in Ireland where he is not supposed to have set foot? And Patrick comes through from his writings as a homely, comfortable patron saint. He begins his Confession: I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and more despised in the eyes of many . . ."
One of the scholars wants to deprive us of perhaps our most vivid picture of him - the boy herding sheep on Slemish Mountain in Antrim. Today how many will make the short trip from Belfast or Ballymena or wherever? Slemish is not a high mountain but it is a precious mountain. We won't be done out of our lovely story about it.