As the 17th
March approaches we prepare ourselves for the annual carnival of
Hiberniana. There will be mass parades of emerald green in the big
cities: Boston, New York, Chicago, Dublin and even London. It will be
a celebration of all things Irish and people will be encouraged to
wear ‘the Green’ and sup the famous Irish stout.
Well, it may surprise
some to discover that St Patrick was not even Irish. He was from
England. In his diaries he describes how he was brought up in the
North of England until the age of 16. He was then kidnapped by
pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. With the advancing and
receding shoreline there is no archaeological evidence to identify St
Patrick’s home and the place names used then are no longer
recognised. However, some historical texts place St Patrick’s home
between The Mersey and The Ribble. In my book that puts him in
Southport.
Of course, the Welsh
claim him but then they claim everyone. Last I heard, they were
claiming that King Arthur and even Robin Hood were Welsh.
So what of the young
lad sold into slavery? Eventually he escaped, came home and joined
the church. He decided to go back to Ireland to spread Christian
culture to the war-like tribes of Ireland and the rest is history.
Did St Patrick drink
The Black Stuff? There is little doubt that St Patrick would have
drunk dark ales. That was the staple drink in monasteries at the
time. The malts would have been darker and smokier because of the
traditional methods used, resulting in a darker ale. St Patrick would
not have drunk anything like the nitrogenised, pasteurised,
super-cooled commercial products associated with St Patrick’s Day
but would have enjoyed a cask ale much more like our local brews:
Parker’s Dark Spartan, Red Star’s Havana Moon or Southport’s
Dark Night.
What about all this
green? For over a thousand years St Patrick was depicted in blue. In
fact he had a shade of blue named after him. St Patrick’s blue is a
pale blue. The green has come in over the last hundred years or so to
make St Patrick seem more Irish.
On the same day, the Guest House in Union Street, Southport, is hosting 'St. Patricks shenanigans with ukulele rebels', aka Uke-Rhythmix.
Wishing you 'Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh' – Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.
This is a guest post by Andrew Frith of the Grasshopper pub.
Despite being a Mancunian Catholic of Irish descent, I'd never heard of the North West link to Saint Patrick (I vaguely thought of him as having being born in Cornwall).
ReplyDeleteAs to what he would have drunk in the monasteries, it was of course long before hops were imported from the continent so would probably be closer to a dark mild ale rather than a stout.