Wednesday, March 24
This Should Have Been Posted on St. Patrick's Day, But I Forgot
St. Blog's resident Cistercian just darn can't remember who last week's green-vested saint-o'-the-day was. Hilarity ensues.
***
I seem to remember he was Romano-British by birth so I presume this means last week we ought to have been chowing down on a two-course meal of sphaghetti and steak and kidney pie, right? I have no idea where all the soda bread and corned beef is coming from... (Ducks angry shower of flying potatoes). *
***
The strangely brief life of St. Patrick written up in the Golden Legend places him, weirdly enough, in Scotland (though considering, for instance, the Irish-born philosopher is called Scotus Eriugena, there seems to have been some etymological blurriness about the local geography in Latin) , and is only long enough to repeat that unfortunate incident when he accidentally stuck the spike of his crozier through the foot of a local king he was baptizing. The chieftain, a hardy soul, thought it was part of the ritual 'til explained otherwise.
***
A friend of mine commented recently something to the effect that she was neither Italian (St. Joseph, which came this last non-penitential Friday to a church basement near you) nor Irish (duh), and therefore was splitting the difference and going out and partying on St. Cyril of Jerusalem's day last Thursday.
*I'm 1/4 Irish (I think), so I'm allowed to make jokes like that. Or at least that's my excuse. Also, corned beef is utterly unknown in Ireland, or at the very least isn't considered particularly representative. Like 90% of the odd stuff associated with St. Paddy's (Green Beer, I'm looking at you), it's what one Irish-from-Ireland friend of mine calls "Oirish," or faux-Hibernian, at worst the product of Hollywood moonshine and at best more Irish-American than Irish per se.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
