A smidgen of Celtic blood swirls around in my veins and I love quite a bit about Celtic culture. The art. The poetry. The men in kilts. The bravado in the face of a long history of being pushed all the way from India to the rocky edges of Western Europe. The poetry. The men in kilts. The poetry.
So, on March 17th, I'm happy to take a day to celebrate things Celtic.
But I spit on St. Patrick. I piss on him. I give him the evil eye. I never celebrate the man who took away Ireland's own pagan religion and replaced it with, what became, one of the nastiest most mysognistic forms of xianity anywhere. Sure, the English had a lot to do with the pauperization of Ireland, but anyone who doubts that the Irish have been longing for their lost souls for the last 1500+ years simply isn't paying attention.
Fuck you St. Patrick.
9 comments:
Some time ago, I used to have different backgrounds for special days on my work machine's desktop.
The Saint Patrick's one featured snakes emerging from Easter eggs, surrounding the saint, who exclaims, "The snakes are always after me Lucky Charms!"
mmmmm, yes, especially long-haired men in kilts!
jawbone
Ohhh, kilt-candy!!! My FAVORITE!!! And, yes, piss on St. Pat - but hand me my Guinness, stat! Truly, as old as beer-making is, I think of downing my dear Guinness as a tribute to the pre-xtian era forebears of mine. That's after getting into a Zen-like state watching the mahogany liquid settle w/its foam as it ripples down the inside of the pint glass...poured poetry 'tis!
Blessings and bring back the 'snakes'!!!
Elspeth
I call Patrick the "Welsh Weasel" for starting the replacement of a surprisingly equitable social system for the curse of Rome.
Now, now, lets not get hasty---I have pet ferrets (my beloved "woozles') and they are far less odious than Patrick! Yes, however, to Zen-like meditations upon the settling of a properly drawn Guinness and lovely men in kilts! We are more Welsh than Irish in this household....but hey, pan-Celticism might be worth a sip or two!
Why do you write as if you have some understanding pre-Christian Celts that modern Irish don't have?
They have been looking for their forests, their swarmps, their cows, their languages, their connection with Europe.
Their soul, if you mean holidays and deities , communication with animals, contact with that other crowd, contact with the dead, ability to be possessed by the gods,full range of shape-shifting as well as general hoodoo and healing and visions and manipulation of chi-
They have as much as anyone else which is quite a bit. A lot more probably than you seem to imagine.
Prayers to saints, reception of the sacraments whatever have been a vital part of all these pagan activties for a thousands years. They are no longer really seperable.
Generally when people, not only Irish, give up one they give up the other.
I like men in kilts, too.
Hell, I just like men, but men in kilts are doubly nice.
Sometimes when I tell people that I was raised a Catholic they make all sorts of assumptions about repression and guilt and this sort of punitive version of Catholicism I knew nothing about. We'd always gone to churches run by Franciscans, the majority of whom were Italians. I can remember sitting in CCD as a little kid and the priest saying, "res, are you doing the best you can?" and I'd nod my little head because I was. And he'd say, "Good, because that's all God wants you to do." Then we moved and started attending this church where all the priests were Irish. Suddenly it was "You had better be good because if you are not -- and our definition of "good" is very narrow, by the way -- you are going straight to hell." Mommy res hung in there for a few weeks and then we started driving an hour back to our old neighborhood to go to church. Anyway, I don't know if those Franciscans were especially easy-going or those Irish priests especially hard-assed, but I always wondered if an assumption that I'd been raised in the Irish wing of the Catholic church was behind those assumptions about repression, guilt, etc.
I'm three-quarters Celt (and one-quarter Hun) and I certainly don't celebrate St Paddy's day.Bloody patriarch.
Anne has a nice interview up with Mannanan (McLyr)who points out that we should be wearing our house tartan rather than green on this day- That, I like!
Love,
Terri in Joburg
To this Irish Woman St Pats is more about Irishness than thon bloody ould foreigner.
Post a Comment