Sham Rock

Years and years ago I may have railed about the nonsense pedalled by pagans (and some Christians) about Easter, but I hadn't any idea that St Patrick's Day was the subject of similar balderdash until a friend of mine posted on LiberFaciorum yesterday. I should resist going down these kind of rabbit holes, but here's the original statement, with my own responses interposed.

"St Patrick's Day - a very very bizarre celebration indeed. A British and Roman priest

That’s the last accurate statement in the passage.

"who attempted to annihilate the Druids,

There’s no evidence of anything approaching this. All the evidence (as opposed to later mythologising) suggests that Patrick’s mission was relatively limited. His Confessio makes it clear that he was highly dependent on the goodwill of the powerful in Irish society, and instead (very, very rarely among Christian missionaries) he says ‘towards the pagan people too among whom I live, I have lived in good faith, and will continue to do so. God knows that I have not been devious with even one of them, nor do I think of doing so, for the sake of God and his church. I would not want to arouse persecution of them and of all of us’.

"conducted exorcisms to banish the great Irish faery deity Ainé, who told lies about the faery,

The only information we have about pre-Christian Irish deities come from later sources produced within a Christian context, such as the Book of Invasions. But Ainé doesn’t appear there: she occurs in the 11th-century The Fitness of Names. There, she isn’t treated as a goddess, and isn’t a supernatural personality, just a powerful woman. In Limerick folklore, she becomes ‘an old woman who was in with the Good People’, not ‘Queen of the Fairies’ as old-style mythologists such as Charles Squire in Celtic Myth and Legend (1919) claimed, or the ‘goddess of summer, wealth, and sovereignty’ as she is now described. There is nothing that links St Patrick with any supposed worship of Aine and his own writings do not mention her.

"who claimed he threw Pagan women who would not convert into the ocean

He doesn’t. We have all the words Patrick wrote about himself in his Confessio and Letter to Coroticus, and that story isn’t in them.

"and they became mermaids,

This statement sounds like it might have come from later hagiography of Patrick, but it seems to be derived from a garbled amalgam of folk stories. I tried to chase it down. In Legends and Superstitions of the Sea (1885), FS Bassett refers to a legend of people who dwelt under the sea (not strictly mermaids) in Wales because their ancestors had refused to believe St Patrick and so had sunk beneath the water, but that’s the closest I can get to any old source for this story. It’s not Irish, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the historical Patrick. I came across references to ‘old women being thrown into the sea on St Patrick’s Day and becoming mermaids’, but they’re all from modern sources.

"who "drove out the snakes" (the Pagan ways)

Indeed an older generation of writers accounted for this legend, which doesn’t date any earlier than the 11th century, by claiming it referred to Patrick exterminating paganism, and therefore by extension pagans themselves. You come across more elaborate versions such as the claims that the Druids had snake tattoos, or revered snakes because they represented the circle of life (that seems especially odd, as snakes don’t naturally curl into circles, and the Druids couldn't have revered animals that weren't around in the first place). There is no evidence for any of it. Today most commentators accept that it’s a ‘just-so’ story concocted to explain the fact that Ireland has no snakes, in the same way that by the 6th century there was a legend circulating that St Hilary had driven the snakes from the island of Gallinara in Italy. The snakes in the story aren’t druids, or even paganism more generally: they’re just snakes.

"and attempted to turn the great bright god Lugh into Lugh-chromain (Little stooping Lugh)

Apart from Lugh being a genuine deity who appears in the Book of Invasions and versions of whom are attested in Britain and Gaul, similar remarks apply to him as to Ainé. There’s no record of St Patrick having any dealings relating to him, and there’s no evidence that the holy mountain eventually called Croagh Patrick was a sanctuary of Lugh.

 "which would become "lephrecaun".

Etymologists now derive leprechaun from the pagan Roman feast of the Lupercalia, so this name for Irish fairy people dates from well into the Christian era of monkish writers who knew what Lupercalia was. It’s nothing to do with Lugh.

"I adore the Irish. I revere Ireland. I have that old blood singing within my veins. But this day is a day to celebrate the survival of the Old Ways despite what this "Saint" represented and the cruel action he took. Today, I wear the green, for the fae, for the Old Ways, for the shining ones and the deep love of the land. Blessings to you all my friends. A blessing on the survival of the old ways, and of the Truth emerging from the distortions of history."

One despairs at people's willingness to take garbled misunderstandings, utterly ahistorical garbage, and other guesses and falsehoods, which could all be corrected with a modicum of curiosity, and call them 'Truth'. At least thoughtful pagans aren't taken in.