why i am wearing green today

[alonewiththemoon]

On the bus ride home last night, I overheard a woman, perhaps eastern European in origin judging by her accent, loudly bemoaning all the drinking that's going to be happening on St. Patrick's Day, which happens to fall on a Friday during Lent this year, and what a horrible shame all this was, etc.  I'm not hypersensitive on the issue or anything, but to me she sounded a bit bigoted and anxious to air her opinions, though maybe she was just a fanatically devout Catholic and was genuinely upset, I don't know.  The jolly black man sitting near her said in his brogue-ish patois accent, "Ah, it's all right though, St. Patrick will be watching over us all up in heaven and he'll intercede for us while we have our whiskey.  He'll understand us having our whiskey.  My great-grandfather was Irish, you know."  The Irish-guy-from-Ireland next to him struck up an Irish joke competition with the jolly man, continuing on long after the woman had left the bus in a bit of a huff.

So St. Patrick is, obviously, a Catholic religious figure, and responsible, single-handedly according to legend, for driving paganism in the form of snakes out of Ireland.  But reading the saints' lives and looking at their iconography over the centuries, it's quite clear that the snakes never went anywhere; they just coiled up somewhere inside, not minding new names and new forms of worship.  Down through the centuries they've stayed, the eyes of Brigid or Epona looking out from the Virgin Mary's blue cowl, the Tuatha de Dannan arrayed in their pantheon above the church altars, the sacrifice of Christ echoing sacrifices made to the bogs long ago, the ancient designs laid over crosses placed at the sacred places.  Snakes are nothing if not resilient.

So I wear green today (and last Sunday) as a salute to that resiliency, to the ability of a people to remain true to who they are even as they adapt and change and conform to the world around them.  I wear green, and I wear a silver snake on my arm.  I have always treated St. Patrick's Day as a day of meditation and reflection, granted lubricated by some Guinness or Bushmills, but that's part of the ritual, the slightly altered state of consciousness that frees the mind to look at one's past and present and future with a sort of passionate detachment.  I make up my own stories about my past, both the past of my physical body and of all those who contributed to creating that body, and through them begin to navigate the future, a never-ending pattern of knotwork as strands interweave and rise and fall from sight.


Last night as I lay dreaming
My way across the sea
James Mangan brought me comfort
With laudnum and poitin
He flew me back to Dublin
In 1819
To a public execution
Being held on Stephen's Green
The young man on the platform
Held his head up and he did sing
Then he whispered hard into my ear
As he handed me this ring

"If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

This snake cannot be captured
This snake cannot be tied
This snake cannot be tortured, or
Hung or crucified

It came down through the ages
It belongs to you and me
So pass it on and pass it on
'Till all mankind is free

If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me"

He swung, his face went purple
A roar came from the crowd
But Mangan laughed and pushed me
And we got back on the cloud
He dropped me off in London
Back in this dying land
But my eyes were filled with wonder
At the ring still in my hand

If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

And if you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!