AVALON Blog Post 6: Driving the Snakes out of Ireland

All the Snakes of Ireland

A Song for Saint Patrick’s Day

I always loved St. Patrick’s Day. Growing up, I felt a strong bond with the Irish part of my heritage. I loved the poetry, the music, the dancing, the fairy lore, the family stories, the bright life force that ran through my idea of what it was to be Irish. I wore green, ate soda bread, played jigs on my fiddle and danced a fair seven steps. Erin go bragh! It’s a bit funny though—it was St. Patrick’s day, but I didn't know much about him.

 

[Images: St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, The horned fertility god Cernunnos with snake on the Gundestrup Cauldron-1^st Century BCE, and Minoan Snake Goddess-1700-1450 c. BCE]

They tell a story about Saint Patrick: while fasting on a mountaintop in Ireland, he was attacked by snakes. He rang his bell, Finn Foya, whose name means “sweet voice,” and all the snakes in Ireland fled into the sea, leaving the island forever. Thus St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, and to this day, Ireland has no snakes.

Scientists tell another story, which is that Ireland never had snakes. Ice Age and surrounding seas kept them from reaching fair Erin. So whence the legend of Patrick and the snakes and the bell?

Cultural anthropologists suggest a third version of the story: that the “snakes” of Ireland could be a symbolic reference to pagan Druids, and the indigenous spiritual traditions that Christianity branded as heathen and idolatrous. That these were “driven out” as Patrick and other missionaries sounded the bell of Christianity, and the new religion took hold.

 

 

[Images: the Pictish Aberlemno Serpent Stone- 

c. 600 CE, and the modern flag of Wales]

So are the snakes in St. Patrick’s story a symbolic stand-in for Druids? Let’s consult some professional smart folk.

Historian Natalia Klemczak tells us that the Druids were the “ancient religious leaders, scientists and researchers of the Celtic society…poets, astronomers, magicians, and astrologers…They organized intellectual life, judicial processes, had skills to heal people, and were involved in developing strategies for war. They were an oasis of wisdom and highly respected in their society.” The snake was a Druid symbol, one they legendarily tattooed on their bodies.

Both snake and dragon are ancient symbols of the divine, particularly associated with fertility and mother goddesses, their shedding of skin connected to rebirth and the cycle of life. Cultural historian and systems scientist Riane Eisler writes: “In archaeological excavations all through the Neolithic, the serpent is one of the most frequent motifs. ‘The snake and its abstract derivative, the spiral, are the dominant motifs of the art of Old Europe,’ writes archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. She also points out that the association of the serpent with the Goddess survived well into historic times…Clearly the serpent was too important, too sacred, and too ubiquitous a symbol of the power of the Goddess to be ignored. If the old mind was to be refashioned to fit the new system’s requirements, the serpent would either have to be appropriated as one of the emblems of the new ruling classes or, alternately, defeated, distorted, and discredited.”

Or erased, yeah? That works too, I guess.

We go into deep waters here, where it starts to feel personal. Modern-day Christianity comes into view when we consider religion from this long historical angle, which means that people’s personal relationship with their faith comes into view too. How do we have this conversation? I was raised Catholic, with devout lefty Catholic-worker style progressives on my Mom’s side, and Irish mystics on my Dad’s. I treasure the memory of my paternal Grandpa announcing on one full moon evening in August that it was “time for church,” and taking us out in the old tin boat to sit in the moonlit cove of Oregon's Odell Lake, while the last twilight faded and the bats thrummed softly through the luminous air. Also vivid, the debates I had with the young priests who taught my confirmation classes when I was 13, about why women can’t be priests. An intractable argument, in the end.

In writing AVALON, I am still wondering about both of those things: the luminous church of the lake and the moonlight, and whether we all have equal access to the divine. I am also writing about a historical moment in which one way of structuring the world was overtaken and replaced by another. Since we are, historically and figuratively, the heirs of that moment, and still living with its structures and consequences, I don’t think it’s possible for it not to feel personal. For good or ill—maybe for both at once. Let’s keep going.

[Image: statue of Saint and Dragon in the Orkadian Cathedral of Saint Magnus]

Midway through our Avalon pilgrimage, my Mom and I went far north to the Orkney Islands, an hour’s ferry ride from the northernmost tip of the Scottish mainland. In Kirkwall we visited the Cathedral of Saint Magnus, built out of local pink sandstone in the 1100's. Inside, I came across a statue of a man vanquishing a dragon with a human face.

At first I thought it was Saint George, the ne plus ultra of dragon-slaying saints. But he looked so spare and Nordic--perhaps it was St. Magnus himself. I googled St. Magnus + dragon, and sure enough, there are stories of St. Magnus vanquishing not only a dragon, but--on a different occasion--a large group of snakes. A prolific vanquisher of reptiles! But then I realized the statue wasn’t Magnus either. It was Saint Olaf. So I googled Olaf, and he too had gone toe-to-tail with a dragon—in his case a terrible sea serpent. I started to wonder just how many saint v. dragon (or snake) stories there are out there. It turns out, there are a lot. Theodore, Michael, Margaret, Philip, Keyne, Cado, Paul Aurelian, Romain, Florent, Clement, Martha, Maudet, to name a few…and of course, Patrick and his snakes.

I suppose it is possible that all of these saints came upon actual dragons and/ or hordes of snakes, and smote them, etc. But let me just take Occam’s razor out of its case…it seems rawther more likely to me, dear readers, that the Saint-vanquishes-dragon visual was a very apt metaphor for out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new. A potent reminder that snakes and dragons are the Devil, and so are your old gods, and we know what happens to devils and their worshippers.

Should we automatically side with the saints? Should we have any sympathy for the snakes? 

There were men and women who were Druids in the land of the Once and Future King. Even the Romans said so. They were mystics, healers, bards, knowledge-keepers, and leaders of their people. And then, some few centuries after Saint Patrick’s time, they were gone. The story of Saint Patrick and the snakes may be made up, but the story of the Druids who somehow ceased to be is a true one.

I think it’s the story of two different ways of structuring the world, and how one structure overcame the other. I think it is a story worth telling.

The Lorica of St. Patrick is an old prayer that may have arisen from a tradition more ancient than the man himself. I love this part of it:

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun
Brilliance of moon
Splendor of fire
Speed of lightning
Swiftness of wind
Depth of sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock.

It does sound rather pagan.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, and Happy Snakes’ Day too. May the road rise to meet us all.

Melody Bates

St. Patrick's Day

NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon: GLASTONBURY TOR

AVALON will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text and photo of St. Olaf © 2019 Melody Bates. Learn more and support her work here.