Well maybe a sort of poster after all for St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick and recalling St. Brigid of Kildare.

St. Brigid of Kildare carried by Angles, painting by John Duncan, 1918.

Usually, on St. Patrick's Day, we put up a depiction of St. Patrick.

But Patrick, the Anglo-Roman patron saint of Ireland, is certainly not the only Irish Saint. As we now count ethnicity, St. Patrick, wasn't even Irish, although what that meant in his day isn't quite the same as what it means in our own, although it isn't wholly unrelated either.

St. Patrick was what we would call today Welsh, but born as he was to a religions patrician family (his father Calpurnius was a Deacon and his grandfather Potitus was a Priest*) were really basically Roman in culture, as their names would indicate.  As is well know, Patrick (Patricius) was captured by an Irish raising party as a youth and spent six years in Ireland as a slave before escaping.  Following that he entered into the Priesthood and returned to Ireland as the evangelizer of the Irish, being able to speak their language as well as Latin and likely Welsh and perhaps other languages.  He's regarded as a Church Father, a Doctor of the Church, today.**

But he isn't the only saint by any means that Ireland produced in ancient or recent times. St. Brigid is another early one.  She was a highly active Nun who founded many churches in Ireland just shortly after St. Patrick (Padraig in Irish) converted the Irish.

This day has become, in modern times, sort of a freakish celebration of the Irish drinking culture which has been co-opted by the American one and the hyped up by high alcohol beers, something the Irish have not really consumed much (Irish beers, like Guinness, a stout, are low alcohol).  I note this, however, as the Irish really are fond of low alcohol heavy bodied beers and they do have a cheerful, and sometimes unfortunate, association with alcohol.  St. Brigid is oddly associated with an early example of this as the claimed author of this peom:

I should like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I should like the angels of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal.
I should like excellent meats of belief and pure piety.
I should like the men of Heaven at my house.
I should like barrels of peace at their disposal.
I should like for them cellars of mercy.
I should like cheerfulness to be their drinking.
I should like Jesus to be there among them.
I should like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I should like the people of Heaven, the poor, to be gathered around from all parts.

Did she author it?

Well, St. Brigid died in 525 at the age of 74 years.  525 is a few years back and that makes it difficult to tell if she wrote this or not.  Who knows.  But it does illustrate a sort of traditional Catholic view of drinking, particularly with the line "I should like cheerfulness to be their drinking."

I was sort of struck by this because the other day I drove five hours to meet with a witness and in the process listed to a podcast featuring a fellow who is a lay Catholic who brings up his faith in breweries, or brewpubs, as he travels around the country.  By his account, he's had some pretty remarkable encounters doing that including some that demonstrate the freakish nature of synchronicity.  He himself would be the first to admit, and did, that this isn't for everyone and that not all persons should go to the pub and have a drink or two.  But he and his host also discussed the convivial religious and philosophic conversations that Belloc, Chesterton and Tolkien enjoyed in their weekly meetings at a pub and who wouldn't have wanted to join that Stammtisch, if only as a silent listener?

Well, at least one person wouldn't have, as he called in utterly horrified and lectured the fellow and his hosts as he "knew what goes on in those places".

Hmmm. . . I think he probably didn't.

Which brings us to the odd Reformation relationship that Americans, and pretty much just Americans and some Canadians, have with alcohol.

Most European nations have a long and at least semi benign relationship with alcohol, although that comment has to be taken in context.  I.e., while you can cite to examples of European farmhands in the Middle Ages drinking over a liter of beer a day, that figure probably doesn't mean much if you are likely to die of some hideous disease or by the sword relatively young.  Nonetheless for much of European history an appreciable number of calories in the European diet came in by wine in Southern Europe and by beer in Northern Europe and the British Isles.

Contrary to what would some would really like to believe, there was no early Christian prohibition on drinking alcohol at all. There was on being a drunk.  But both the Old and New Testament had favorable references to alcohol.  Jesus' first public miracle was turning water into wine at the wedding feast and suggestions that he really turned water into grape juice are, I'm sorry if I offend, flat out absurd.  St. Paul counseled Timothy that he should stop just drinking water and drink a little wine as Timothy was sick so often.  Catholics and the Orthodox have traditionally regarded alcohol of the wine and beer variety as gifts from God, but like other gifts of a pleasurable type, such as food or sex, etc., gifts that had to be taken in context and in moderation.  Chesterton sort of defined the general concept as follows:

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

Chesteron also counseled never to drink anything that was dreamt up after the Reformation although in so doing he may not really have been familiar with the history of whiskey.  Most, maybe all, whiskey distilleries are post Reformation but there are references all the way back to Roman Britain of the Celts distilling drink, so it's been around a long while.

The point to that is, however, that in most of Europe the drinking cultures, and I use the plural advisedly, didn't sit around getting plowed.  British and Irish beers were decidedly low alcohol and remain so, although there's now a great concern in the UK about the young British switching to German high alcohol beers.  Ironically, that may be part of the dred law of unintended consequences as the British keep trying to clamp down on drinking while, at the same time, the young British are switching to American bing style drinking.  Before we go on to that we should note that while German beers of some types are highly alcohol than the British, German drinking culture didn't emphasize sitting around getting plowed either.

Indeed, where people in Europe have traditionally really gotten slammed are in areas in which poverty was a real problem and, oddly, the weather.  Scandinavia and Russia provide really outstanding examples.  Long winters, low food variety, and poverty seems to have made those regions ones where, traditionally, boozing has been a big problem. It remains so in Russia.

And it has been in the United States from time to time, which we've dealt with in our prior posts on Prohibition.  Prior to Prohibition the United States had a real alcohol problem.  This is interesting in and of itself and it would require some exploration as to why.

One thing that is misunderstood in these regards is that Prohibition was due to a "Puritan" impulse.  Not so.  The Puritans brewed beer and had no problem with that.  This is one of at least two areas mentioned in the list of things above that the Puritans were really big on, assuming they weren't big on all three, and both of them are areas in which people routinely claim that they were fun wreckers.  The Puritans were fun wreckers, but being opponents of beer didn't enter into the equation on that.  That came from elsewhere.

Well, anyhow, today is St. Patrick's Day and if you are so inclined, and if you are not don't worry about it, a feast truly in honor of the Patron Saint of Ireland could feature a little Guinness, in moderation.

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*Having mentioned that St. Patrick's father was a Deacon and his grandfather a Priest will immediately send some off into some sort of shock but it shouldn't.

First of all, there's no prohibition in either Rite of the Church (to include the Orthodox) from Deacon's being married.  In the Latin Rite today once a Deacon is ordained he cannot marry, but a married man can be ordained a Deacon.  If his spouse dies, he cannot remarry.

Now, today, a married man cannot usually be ordained a Priest in the Latin Rite.  I say usually as this isn't universally true, however.  A married man who holds orders in a Protestant church that is close in form and belief to the Catholic Church can in fact be ordained in the Catholic Church.  It's not hugely clear to me, but the ordinate of the Catholic Church which takes in members of the conservative branch of the Anglican Communion might not only be able to take in their married Priests, but it might also be able to ordain future married Priests.  Again, I'm not clear on that, but I know that was discussed at one point.  The Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church does ordain married men to the Priesthood just as the Orthodox do.  Indeed, while its not really supposed to happen, I guess, some Latin Rite Catholics do switch rites in order to seek Holy Orders in the Eastern Rite and it seems that they do achieve that.

At the time we're speaking of, the rule that prohibited married men in the Latin Rite, and that is in fact what St. Patrick was part of, didn't exist. So at that time married men could be ordained in the Latin Rite.  The rule prohibiting that, and it is a rule, not a dogma, came later.  For what its worth, at least St. Peter, the first Pope, was a married man although its not entirely clear if he was a widower at the time he became an Apostle or not.

**St. Patrick is a Church Father and Doctor of the Church.  

It's easy to forgot how early St. Patrick really was in church history.  He's not like one of the very early Fathers of the Church who were ordained by Apostles but he was born in the 4th Century and is a very early and hugely important figure in the early church.  He's important not only to the Irish, but in general.  Perhaps thats the reason why you can find Orthodox Churches named in his honor.

What this also points out, and its worth pointing out, is how Catholic, ie., universal, the early figures of the Church were.  St. Patrick could speak and write in Latin, and he did write in Latin to be sure.  But he probably spoke a version of Welsh at home and on his evangelizing mission he was speaking Irish Gaelic.  Some of the early Church Fathers were Aramaic speakers.  Some will commonly think of them operating all in Greek, but they didn't.

St. Patrick's Day, 1918.

A poem about March, as a seventeen year old Irish lass, greeted Cheyenne's newspaper readers on this day in 1918.

Along with news the Soviets had taken Russia out of the war. . . unless the Russian Socialist had their way.

Casualties were starting to mount.  An oil prediction that came true in the 2010s appeared in this day's newspaper.

And Villa was back on the front page, having been reported to have taken Durango.

It's Paddy, not Patty

Okay, I admit that this would have been more appropriate for St. Patrick's Day, but I missed the saint's day as I was distracted and busy.

St. Patrick was a Roman Britain who went by the name Patricius in his writings, which we would expect.  Unknown, I suppose, to most moderns he left a short biography of his life.  He came from an influential British family.  Showing the extent of the remaining Roman world, his father's name was Calpurnius and his grandfather's name Potitus.  His family was devout, with his father being a Catholic Deacon and his Grandfather a Catholic Priest.  Before we get the "oh my gosh, a Priest who was married!" gasp, the rule prohibiting Latin Priest from marrying, which is a rule, not a dogma, had not yet been imposed, so that would hardly have been unusual.  His father was also a decurion, a sort of Roman city councilman.

Patricius was not devout as a young man, but he became so when he was kidnapped by Irish raiders at age 16.  He was a slave for six years, herding sheep for part of that time and becoming increasingly devout, until a voice told him to return home.  Escaping and traveling 200 miles across Ireland he persuaded the captian of a ship to take him on board.  He continued his religious studies and then travelled to what is now France to study them further, being ordained there.  He then returned to Ireland to become the stout hearted evangelizer of the Irish.

Okay, what's that have to do with the title?

Well this,  To St. Patrick, in his native tongue, his name wias Patricius.  In Irish that became Pádraig.  It doesn't even really sound like Patrick.  

The Irish diminuitive of that is Páidín.

To the English, and hence to some Irish, Páidín sounds like "Paddy".

Paddy, not Patty.

Patty is some sort of English diminutive for Patricia.

Now, there are a lot of Patrick's and Patricia's in my family. Zillions.  And occasionally somebody tries to affect an Irish accent and welcome us a "Happy St. Patty's Day", or say something foolish like "Patty me boy".  Bah.  

It's St. Patrick's Day, and if you are from a real Irish family, not one that simply puts on a button that says something foolish like "Kiss me, I'm Irish!" that is a Saints day.  Not a day to wear green and drink green beer (and if you were Irish, you'd be drinking Guinness or Murphy's, not green Coors).  And to the saint, he likely was called Patricius by his family and probably Pádraig by the Irish, who likely had a tough time with his Roman name.  But nobody, I"m quite certain, called him Patty, ever, or Paddy, for that matter.

Patrick, fwiw, is the English version of  Pádraig, because English came to dominate Ireland as the language during the long English occupation.  The Irish name Pádraig never went away, but Patrick became quite common.  But not in the diminutive.

And, fwiw, while there are Irish men who get tagged with the diminutive Páidín or Paddy, not all of them do by a long shot.  In my heavily Irish family almost all the Patrick men end up being called "Pat".  Some of the Patricia's end up being called Pat as well, and some end up being called Trisha. 

But nobody is called Patty.

St. Patrick's Day, 1916 in Ireland.

Dublin battalions of the Irish Volunteers held public maneuvers under arms.  Other Irish Volunteer units did the same in other parts of the country 

The demonstrations were not universally popular with the Irish public given that a high percentage of Irish me had volunteered to serve with the British army then fighting in Europe.  They did reflect rising tensions following the extension of conscription to Ireland.  Authorities were distressed by the large number of firearms showing up in Irish Volunteer hands. 

The Irish Volunteers was an Irish militia formed to support Home Rule, should there be violent opposition to it.  Home Rule was coming on, and only the Great War had delayed it.  By this time, however, the Volunteers had been infiltrated by nationalist with their own designs, which would soon become evident.

Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: The Irish in Wyoming. A St. Patrick's Day Observation during National Agriculture Week

 

The Kistler Tent and Awning building in downtown Casper Wyoming (the company still exists, but not in this location).  Note the reference to Sheep Wagon covers, herder's tepees and lambing tents, all things that many an Irish immigrant to Wyoming became familiar with.

I linked this item (which is one of the most popular on the blog noted below) to this site way back when I first wrote it.

Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: The Irish in Wyoming: Just recently we posted our "green" edition of this blog with our St. Patrick's Day entry .  Given that, this is a good time ...

I'm sure it's bad form to do that again, but today is St. Patrick's Day and its National Agriculture Week. What do the two have to do with each other?  Well, quite a lot. 

At least as late as the 1990s, agriculture made up the largest sector of the Irish economy. I don't know where it stands today, but Ireland has also undergone a tremendous economic and cultural revolution since that time, not all of which is good by any means.  Perhaps Ireland is sort of a cautionary tale, on some things, today, as well as being an example of a host economic lessons of one kind or another.

Be that as it may, Ireland's history, as anyone who has looked at it well knows, has been far from pacific or bucolic.  The Emerald Isle has a tragic history in the extreme, with its principal exports for many years including its young.  Some of those people include my ancestors, on both sides of my family.  Indeed, my great grandmother came from Ireland at age 3, with her sister who was 19.  They were the only two members of that family that the family could afford to send to the United States.  I don't know what became of the rest of them, save for one brother of hers who joined the English army and made a career out of it.

A common concept of the Irish in America depicts them in the urban setting, that was so common for many of them. And, indeed, on my mother's side that would be accurate, as they went to Montreal.  But another very common path for a very rural people was to try to get some land and farm.

Indeed, the Irish were manic about agriculture and land.  In Ireland, having land was paramount, and most of them didn't have it.  To be able to obtain land was everything to many of them, and in the US they had that chance.  Not just in the U.S., of course.  This was also true of much of the English Empire and it was also true for all of North America.  Mexico, for example, first drew the attention of Irish immigrants at the time of the Mexican War, where the Mexicans picked up on the fact that land could be a powerful inducement to desertion for an oppressed, land starved, Catholic, population.  And it worked in some cases.  Young Irish soldiers in the U.S. Army, crossing into Mexican towns to attend Mass, seeing attractive Mexican young ladies, and being offered free land. . . . that went a long ways towards breaking the bonds of loyalty, in some cases, for some so situated.

Anyhow, the Irish are part of the story of American agriculture in the west for that reason and they're particularly associated with the history of sheep ranching here.  Sheep were an animal that they were already familiar with and they became one of the foundational pegs of Wyoming sheep ranching quite rapidly.  The Irish and sheep were a story in Wyoming well into the 20th Century.

Now, of course, in the somewhat glum thread I've been sewing with here recently, it would be wholly impossible for an immigrant to come over and establish a viable ranching operation in the U.S., let alone become rich doing it as some Irish immigrants did.  It isn't even really possible for the average American to get into it.  That should give us some pause.

Civil Holidays

 Leann posted an item on her blog about Columbus Day, urging Congress to consider changing it to Indigenous Peoples Day.  I'll confess that I think that's not a good idea, and that taking one unobserved civil holiday and converting it into a second, ethnic based one, would probably only serve to create additional unobserved civil holidays.  But it does raise the question in my mind a to what holidays we observe, and which we do not, over time.

 Columbus Day Parade prior to World War One.  I know that some places still have Columbus Day Parades, but not all that many.  It's mostly an unobserved holiday most places.  Apparently this wasn't always the case.

I didn't even take note that it was Columbus Day, although I should have, as I didn't get any mail. That's the kind of holiday it is. Federal offices close, but that's about all that happens, other than some stores trying to take advantage of the marketing opportunities it probably doesn't provide.  Most places, people just ignore Columbus Day.

Presidents Day has gone that way too.  At one time, I think people did stop to observe Washington's Birthday or Lincoln's Birthday, but combining all the Presidential observances into one day didn't do them any favor.  Sure, I might wish to honor Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelt's, etc., but I'm not too keen on honoring some others.  I'd be hard pressed to raise a glass of milk to Millard Filmore, for example, and I'm not going to toast John F. Kennedy, who was a terrible President in my view (yes, I know that we're not supposed to say that, but he was).  It hardly matters anyhow, as now the day is so diluted that nobody pays any mind.  These days, Presidents Day and Columbus Day, have passed off of everyone's personal observational calendar.

But some days are in, for sure.  Martin Luther King Day seems widely observed with some civil events in most places.  In Wyoming, it's Equality Day as the legislature balked at recognizing a Civil Rights leader when it seemed to them that we'd been honoring civil rights long before that. They were wrong, but at the time I thought that passage might be easier if they made it Washakie-Ross-King Day, in honor of Chief Washakie, Nellie Tayloe Ross, and Martin Luther King.  I still think that would have been nifty.  I note that everyone around here calls the day "Martin Luther King Day", showing that people weren't as worked up, I think, as the legislature apparently was.

Americans also heartily observe Thanksgiving Day, as to Canadians, although the north of the border holiday just occurred.  Christmas and Easter, religious holidays, are also widely observed by everyone.  Veterans Day remains a huge civil holiday in most places, as does Memorial Day, which brings me to my next curious item.

June 6, the anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy during World War Two, have practically become auxiliary Veterans and Memorial Days.  Both Veterans and Memorial Days actually honor the same people, veterans and more particularly lost veterans, but June 6 has come to be a memorial to World War Two veterans.  November 11 has to hang on as the memorial for World War One veterans, which is how it started off.  December 7 has also taken on that status, and to a certain extent September 11 has now as well, although its officially Patriots Day.  This is interesting in that it shows that honoring veterans remains a huge deal in the United States, to such an extent really that there are two days associated with big events in World War Two that are nearly axillary holidays simply by popular acclimation.

St. Patrick's Day is that way too, although its really degraded over the years.  St. Patrick is the Patron Saint of Ireland, and originally St. Patrick's Day was simply celebrated with a huge celebration wherever there were a lot of Irish expatriates.  Generally local Bishops gave a dispensation for Lenten observances on that day (it's always during Lent) and there were big Irish parties, often with a lot of beer, but there were also quite a few Masses as well.  Now there are still a lot of parties, but generally its an excuse for people to wear green and drink a lot of beer, irrespective of their ancestry.

Cinco de Mayo is approaching the status that St. Patrick's Day had perhaps 30 years ago, being a celebration of all things Hispanic on that day.  It's curious in that it isn't a big day in Mexico itself, even though it commemorates a Mexican battle. The widely made claim that its "Mexican Independence Day" is flatly wrong as that day is September 19.  A big day in strongly Hispanic areas can also be found in Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day, which  was a big day long before Cinco de Mayo was.

All this is interesting, I think, in that it shows us what people value at any one time.  Columbus Day has gone from being essentially a day in which Italians could point to somebody they were proud of to being largely ignored, or controversial to the extent its observed.  At the same time St. Patrick's Day has become a huge unofficial holiday and Cinco de Mayo is becoming one.  People want to honor veterans so much that we're basically observing four veterans' days.  We have fewer civil holidays than most other people, we don't observe all that we have, but we do observe a few that aren't official.  I wonder what days we would have found being observed a century ago?

Wednesday, March 18, 1914. "Among the things that Wyoming may be thankful is that it is not on the borderland of barbarous Mexico". Enduring jingoism.

British Wilson, border news?

Wilson was in fact an anglophile, but his government certainly wasn't dominated by the British.

And Mexico barbarous?

Some old headlines are oddly contemporary, as are some jingoistic views, we have to say.  This almost sounds like a Trump rally, as over the weekend he declared that some migrants aren't human.

Barbarous?

Is the cigarette ad a football helmet, or a pilot's helmet?

And the brown bottle thing is correct:

The Boomerang was less dramatic, but it did have an interesting item on pipe smoking at a St. Patrick's Day party.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 17: St. Patrick's Day

Today In Wyoming's History: March 17: St. Patrick's Day: Today in St. Patrick's Day.  The feat day falls on the anniversary of his death in Saul, Ireland, in the year 461 or 493.  St. Patr...

Wednesday, March 17, 1909. John Redmond appeals to the readers of the Rocky Mountain News.

 

Colorado had a substantial Irish  and Irish American population, both of which were represented by my father's grandparents, who at that time lived in Victor, near Leadville.  Redmond was a major Irish figure who was working diligently towards Irish self rule, something that would come flying apart due to World War One.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, March 16, 1909. A serious Congress.