Some humour, anyway, over the proposal in Stormont that St Patrick's Day should be made not only a public holiday, but an official flag day. The Irish News had a pocket cartoon on its front page, with a traditional John Bull, top hat, Union Jack waistcoat, thumb up: "Top o' the mornin' to ye! St Patrick's the name!" And in the News Letter Geoff Hill had a good time with Sammy Wilson, who pointed out that he was not Irish and was not going to celebrate Ireland's national day. Of course, St Patrick wasn't Irish either, but we'll look at that later. For those not aware of all the niceties, for long, outside nationalist areas in Belfast, the day was mostly noted for the schools' rugby cup final. A Belfast man who believed in the Union but voted Labour had long lived south of the Boyne and always wore shamrock on the day. A colleague in the Civil Service where he worked, once pointed to the greenery and asked: "Jimmy, is that not a bit Fenian?" Jimmy, who had lost two brothers to the first World War, took a deep breath and replied in a voice that could be heard far from his desk: "Wasn't your so-and-so King pinning shamrock on his soand-so Irish Guards in London this morning? And if it's good enough for him it's so-and-so good enough for me."
To get to the real Patrick is a thankless task. Many illusions go. R.P.C. Hanson, in his book of 1983, The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick, then described as Professor of Theology at the University of Manchester and Assistant Bishop of Manchester (Anglican), a noted scholar, gives a series of hard knocks to our more traditional views. Many of the details about Patrick were invented long after his death, he tells us. Mitres - and his statues often have one - were not brought in for at least another 500 years. Banishing snakes was a story concocted about 400 years after his death. His teaching of the Trinity by using the three leaves of the shamrock? About a thousand years after. He wasn't a captive on Slemish. "All the exciting and glamorous features that tradition attached to Patrick must be removed if we are to know what he was really like." Finally: "Concerning where and how he died we know nothing at all."
Sammy Wilson may be pleased to have it from Rev Hanson that Patrick was born of British parents. British, not English. Pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain, i.e., "Roman and sub-Roman Britain". Enough. Y