While modern America associates St. Patrick’s Day with drinking and… drinking, it wasn’t always a holiday of celebration. Centuries ago, in the ancient times before the birth of the United States, there was a small island with not much going for it other than lots of green grass and some potatoes. That all changed in 1492 with the birth of a man we know today as… Saint Patrick.
Robert Stephen Patrick was born in a small village just north of what is, today, modern Dublin. His mother was a stay at home mom because in the 15th century that’s what they did. His father, Patrick Patrick, was a drunkard, shepherd, and poet seasonally. At the time of his birth, Ireland was in the midst of yet another war with neighboring England. England had just published a new map of the known world and had labeled Ireland as the “Land of Ire” and the four people of Ireland who could read (of which two knew the meaning of “ire”) were offended. Those four went to a pub, drank, and stirred up the locals. Those locals then went to other pubs, drank and stirred up other locals and before you knew it all of Ireland was drunk and angry at England.
England was completely unaware of the international incident that it had caused by publishing its new atlas and could not understand why the Irish were so upset and throwing rocks at their ships in the Irish Sea (back then it was called the Sea of Yahg). King Charles II called together his advisers and they decided that instead of waging war with the Irish, they would send a negotiator to find out what the problem was. During the same meeting they also decided to adopt a bicameral legislature and declared war on France (then referred to as le France). The king’s chief diplomat feared the Ireland trip was likely to end poorly for him so he went down to a local British pub (lots of pubs in this story) and convinced a local man to go to Ireland in disguise as the diplomat. The local man sent was none other than Sir Isaac “Figgy” Newton, although at the time he had not been knighted and was just called Mr. Newton or “Figgy”. Mr. Newton, having nothing else to do at the time, accepted the proposal and quickly boarded a ship bound for Ireland. Three months later he arrived at County Cork.
The Irish, by now, had forgotten why they were mad at the English but that did little to dispel said anger. Actually, it created two factions of Irish… “The Irish Who Hate England” and “The Irish Who Hate England More”. Those two factions fought and eventually merged to form “The Irish Who Hate England the Most”. At the time, the head of the Dublin chapter of the IWHEM (Eye-Whem) was Patrick Patrick. Patrick Patrick feared that the diplomat from England was actually an assassin so for the initial meet and greet he sent his son Robert to discuss the terms of British surrender with Figgy. No, he didn’t like his son. Yes, that seems mean. It was a mean time… especially in Greenwich.
When Newton and Patrick met, they had little in common… least of which was language. The English were speaking English and the Irish were speaking Gaelic. So the two sat and stared at each other for about an hour. Finally Newton made an attempt to introduce himself. When Patrick introduced himself, Newton clearly did not understand what he was saying. In his official journal of the trip, which was subsequently made into a treaty by King Charles II, Newton referred to Patrick merely as “something Stuh Patrick”. Later in history, King James had everything in England rewritten to suit his mood and the Articles of Irish Subjugation (as the treaty was called) was rewritten to have been concluded between St Patrick and Isaac F Newton. King James also had a new bible rewritten to sort out some plot holes and also some stories about futuristic knights with swords of light, a guy with a dog and a big circle in the sky that could blow up France. Newton went on to discover gravity, physics, and beef jerky.
Patrick’s story was far from over though (whether you like it or not). In 1677, Ireland was under siege yet again, but this time not by the English (by now the English had grown tired of beating on the Irish and had moved on to the Scots) but by snakes. Patrick had recently been hired as an apprentice snake puncher by Lord Samuel, son of Jack. Lord Samuel was a pioneer in the field of reptile repulsion and was founder of the Irish Society for Shouting at Animals. The ISSA had received a government grant to remove the snakes from the plane… I mean island. They were largely successful. They rid the island of the snakes mostly by putting them in boxes and mailing them to Scotland as a joke. Sadly, the joke had dire consequences when one of the snakes grew to monstrous size and began terrorizing the towns near Loch Ness. The English found the whole thing amusing. Lord Samuel was later killed in a duel with some jerky teenager.
Following the death of Lord Samuel, St Patrick fell into a deep depression. The snake punching business was failing and he was having trouble making ends meet. For a short time he formed a start up company specialising in the promotion of Irish Midget Wrestling, but by 1776 the Irish government had banned the sport and once again Patrick was broke. Patrick was forced to move in with one of his former employees, a midget wrestler named Sean. Once again bad luck fell and Sean contracted leprasy and died. After burying the leper Sean, Patrick wandered off into the hills and was never seen or heard from again.
Until 1984… when he appeared in New York city and opened a bar. He never cleaned the taps when he bought the place so the beer was all green and disgusting. On opening day, he toasted himself, his bar, and his legacy. He took a drink and immediately died of dysentery.
The End.
Happy St Patrick’s Day.
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