Timothy Birdnow

Top 'O the morning to yah!

As today is St. Patrick's day I thought I'd post this article explaining how the "wearin O the Green" got started.

Turns out St. Patrick's color was blue and so was Ireland's until the Irish rebellion against the British in 1798 led to the adopting of green as the official color of free Ireland. The Ulstermen - Irish who were descended from Scotsmen that the English settled in Northern Ireland - had orange as their color. Ultermen are also known sometimes as Scots-Irish and they were the first Irish to settle in the New World. Ulstermen hated the Catholics who came after the potato famine, btw, and were no small part of the lampooning and abuse of Irish settlers who were to come later.

At any rate the wearin' O the Green was more a political and religious statement than anything else.

And as for drinking large quantities of ale or whiskey? That was pretty much an American thing; the Irish do not celebrate St. Patrick's Day in that fashion by and large. It's more a feast day for a saint.

But why not? The Church doesn't even have St. Patrick's Day as an official feast anymore.

BTW corned beef and cabbage are not an Irish repast at all. The Irish eat a lot of fish and mutton. Germans ate corned beef and cabbage and when the Irish immigrated to the U.S. they were poor and it was cheap and they learned it from their German neighbors. There is an interesting scene in the movie The Devil's Own where Harrison Ford's family is eating corned beef and cabbage in honor of Brad Pitt, who is an (unbeknownst to them) Irish terrorist who will be staying with them. He asks what it is and they are dumbfounded; they thought that was what Irish people ate. It's what THEY ate and they were Irish Americans.

At any rate Green as the color of Ireland is not an ancient and venerable tradition.

One more thing; St. Patrick was himself Welch and not Irish. He was kidnapped as a boy and enslaved to an Irish warlord. Eventually he was able to leave and went home but he felt the finger of God on his heart and returned to Ireland to preach the Gospel to them. He pretty much single-handedly converted the Irish to Christianity. There is no evidence he liked ale any more than the next man (everyone drank it though since water was usually bad) and they didn't even HAVE whiskey back then. It was either imported wine or ale or mead from honey. So a celebration in Ireland would feature those things.

St. Patrick first arrived in Ireland in 432 a.d., by the way. Ireland's society completely collapsed as Ireland was plunged into total darkness in 536 thanks to a volcanic eruption in Iceland and it remained so for three years, destroying the society that had been there. This was followed the next century by the plague of 664 which began with a total solar eclipse and decimated the country.

Ireland was always a very unlucky place which is what "the luck of the Irish" means; they were forever beset by disasters, especially at critical times in their history. The Black Death in the 14th century was particularly terrible in Ireland. And we all remember the potato crop failure of the nineteenth century which led to the great diaspora of Irish who had to flee or die.

So Ireland has had a rough, bitter history since St. Patrick appeared, yet she has always remained faithful to the teaching of their patron. Or had until recently anyway.

So enjoy the day; eat, drink, be merry, dance a jig, pinch a drunk who isn't wearing green, and otherwise make a spectacle of yourself. But remember why you are doing so.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at March 17, 2026 10:12 PM (X5D0l)

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 18, 2026 09:10 AM (oflqW)

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at March 19, 2026 12:09 AM (X5D0l)

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