c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ An old music hall song says he was the gentleman who drove the frogs and snakes from Ireland. And that’s still the image most Americans have of St. Patrick _ the shamrock-wielding toad-chaser who somehow got mixed up with green beer and leprechauns.

But who was St. Patrick? What parts of the story are true and what parts legend. And how did he evolve into the hero of the Irish and the pseudo-Irish at this time of the year? For many,”St. Paddy”is still a two-dimensional character painted on a holy card, with centuries of myth encrusted on his image like barnacles on a ship’s bottom.

When the Rev. Timothy J. Deasy of Christ the King Church in Daphne, Ala., was growing up in County Cork, for example, he learned more about the myth than the real man.”We never realized he wasn’t Irish. We just thought he was great because he was Irish.” Myth and history often blend, forging characters who reveal more about the mythical needs of modern society than about the historical figures themselves.”History is not just the story of what happened _ it’s as much about what people think happened and what they make of it,”said Thomas Burns, professor of Roman and early medieval history at Emory University in Atlanta.”St. Patrick has contributed greatly to the Irish and Irish American people. That’s his miracle.” Patrick has become an archetype _ a figure invested with such symbolic meaning the historical truth becomes obscured.

For the Irish, St. Patrick is their patron saint, the protector who constantly intercedes for them, said Deasy. And in Ireland the holiday is not celebrated with the hoopla it is in the United States. “It’s more of a religious holiday,”Deasy said.”We’d go to Mass, of course, and we’d play a lot of Irish sports like Irish football and hurling.” The saint is certainly well loved in Ireland, though, he adds.”We always had a great devotion to St. Patrick. He was up there after Jesus and the Blessed Mother.” Patrick”re-invents himself”every century or so, said Burns. The modern fascination with Patrick, he said, began during the 19th century when Ireland was beginning to rebel against British rule.”He brought Ireland into Europe and he brought Europe to Ireland,”Burns said.

Deasy said he understands why Americans of all kinds wear the green on the saint’s day.”It has kind of a universal appeal, because of the frivolity and the laughter.” The traditional dreariness of the Lenten season also has a lot to do with it, he added.”The bishops always used to give a dispensation to eat and drink all you want _ and everybody always enjoyed that.” Recent scholarship is returning some of the vigor to the Dear Old Saint, as he is known to some, cutting through the accretions of the centuries to reveal the man who evangelized Ireland and aided the re-evangelization of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.

There is little agreement about some of the facts of his life _ including the date and place of his birth, where he was schooled, where he was bought as a slave. But one thing no Patrick scholar would assert is that he drove the frogs and snakes from Ireland.”There just weren’t any,”Burns said. Geological evidence suggests the island separated from the European mainland before frogs and snakes evolved.

Another point of agreement, according to Burns, is that Patrick’s autobiography,”Confessions,”is authentic, and it’s the basis of most of the truth in his story.

He said Patricius, _ the Latin version of his name _ was the son of a Romanized Briton.”His father probably was a member of the town consular class. I hate to use the term middle class, but if there were such a thing, he would be in it. I guess you could call him a modestly wealthy landowner.” In his”Confessions,”Patrick writes that as a teen he was captured by slave-traders and shipped to Ireland, where he was sold to a minor king. He spent several years in near-solitude tending sheep and praying God would deliver him.

He wrote that he had a dream of God calling him out of slavery, and the next morning he walked away from his owner’s flocks. He wandered until he wound up somewhere on the coast of Brittany, where he studied for the priesthood. Later he was ordained, made a bishop, and sent back as an apostle to the people who had enslaved him.

Numerous stories exist about Patrick’s missionary activities in Ireland.”There are stories of his travels all around Ireland,”Deasy said.”There are literally hundreds of holy wells dotted around Ireland that he blessed. I supposed it was a way of emphasizing baptism.” But whether Patrick used a shamrock to illustrate the Holy Trinity, Burns is compelled to answer”no.””Well,”he modified,”maybe he did, but it’s not recorded. If it’s not in a document of some sort, or in some acceptable archaeological evidence, we just can’t say it happened.” But even if historians were able to write the definitive biography of Patrick, with all the details filled in, Burns said he would still prefer the mythological man.”I’ve given up on the `real’ St. Patrick. We know what we know, and what’s really significant is that the myth has survived.’

MJP END LONG