St. Patrick...

[threadwalker]

Here's my quick reply to someone's query of "what does St. Patrick have to do with Leprachauns?" It strays a bit... more about what St. Patrick's day is about. Please feel free to correct/add to it- it's off the top of my head

Comments

[sol3]

On a related note - an article on the irish pub explosion

[threadwalker]

Wow. Just wow. Not surprizing though. Yeeesh. That explains the pubs I've been seeing more of too. Boston actually had it's own real ones via immigrants, but still.

But my point about the holiday stands- it wasn't a big deal in Ireland as a cultural thing ( a Catholic Saint's Day, yes), but it certainly was in the states. Cultural Identity becomes more important when you are surrounded by strangers. Seems like a lot of the US's cultural groups get more whatever they are here, and with understandible reasons.

[ruespieler]

This is why I love LJ (and the net in general)- people pick stuff up and go with it, then other people pick up variations from them - you can be a part of a million peoples thought stream and never know it.

[threadwalker]

yup :)

[catachthonian]

In addition to the caricatures of Irish as leprechauns, they were also represented using some of the same techniques applied to caricatures of black people. People actually convinced themselves that the two groups looked similar, and in particular were more simian, and therefore less evolved.

See: http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_2.html
And in particular: http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/scientific.gif

Another cool fact about St. Patrick is that he is actually Damballah, the Haitian serpent god. Haitians being converted to Catholicism came to this conclusion after seeing all those portraits of him commanding snakes.

[threadwalker]

Interesting.

"Another cool fact about St. Patrick is that he is actually Damballah, the Haitian serpent god. Haitians being converted to Catholicism came to this conclusion after seeing all those portraits of him commanding snakes."

Awesome!

[threadwalker]

Thanks for the link!

[chimerically]

Suddenly Finian's Rainbow doesn't seem nearly so arbitrary ...

Ireland (along with the old dryers at my laundromat) now always reminds me of The Magdalene Sisters, a haunting movie of the horribly abusive Magdalene convents for "fallen women" (the last of which closed less than ten years ago!).

[fallen_scholar]

Later, he was the only famous Saint associated with Ireland

Well, St. "If-She-Brought-The-Beer-Then-She-Can't-Be-Pagan" Bridgette gets a lot of press too, but point taken.

Green was sometimes enforced as a color to wear to distinguish Irish, like stars were worn for Jews (not just in Germany, all over the world for centuries), but it became another badge of pride.

Can you find me a cite on this? I've heard the story told as reactionary to Orange, but not as enforced, more as a "oh yeah? We'll we're Green! And that's the color of revolution and freedom, bucko!" But I can't seem to uncover anything on a brief webscan either way, so I'd like to know where you heard it.

There were not only enslaved Irish in Colonial days,

The difference between indentured servitude and slavery is not semantic.

(they're famous for doing this by becoming increasingly important public officials).I'd phrase it more that they were the Mexicans of the day, doing the jobs no one else would. However, in those days, those jobs happened to be in the civil

[threadwalker]

on the green, I am not totally positive. I have heard it was done in factories. I could very easily be totally wrong. I've also heard the orange/green thing, and plenty green pride stuff.

In the new world, indentured servitude was often very nearly slavery becuase the people keeping track of the crimes that people were serving for were and the service were on the other side of the Atlantic. They were sold as well, housed in the same camps in plantations, etc. Of course, I read about a lot of this back in high school, but it was bits of actual accounts.

The wage thing is a very well-documented thing, much in the papers of the day, as was the "No Irish" proclamation on hiring notices.

I agree with you on the move into public service- totally true, but as it worked for them, there became an ethic of pursuing it.

AS to the Catholic thing, absolutly. I did a term paper for my religion and society class at Aberdeen on Northern and Southern Ireland and the conflicts. It just kept coming back to that over and over.

[fallen_scholar]

No disagreements on the wage/No-Irish business.

I've done a fair bit of reading on the indentured servitude thing because that's how some of my decendents came to this country (not the Irish ones though). We can get into it if you'd like, but for the time being I'm going to leave it at the differences, like the differences between slavery and serfdom, aren't just in name alone, and it does a disservice to both to not call what is, what is.

[threadwalker]

oh, and don't even get me started on Bridgit! Anouther perfect example of a pagan goddess (Bridgid) who got cannonized in the attempt to make her worship Catholic. The typical story goes along with it... she was sainted because she refused to marry a pagan man. riiiiight. Great way to alter the gods- make a story where the god becomes altered and denounces the old theological system.