March Newsletter – What Do Pigs Have to Do with St Patrick?
Welcome to the March Newsletter!
Well now, isn’t it good to have a bit of sunshine for a change! A happy St Patrick’s Day to you all, whether you are far or near. Your newsletter this month touches on the Saint himself, of course, and his adventures in ancient Ireland.
Tom muses about what St Patrick might have to do in today’s Ireland to get our attention and change our errant ways.
Paudie explores Ireland’s Hidden Histories by Frank Hopkins and, in his close reading, discovers Lola Montez and her tarantuala dance of the 17th of February. Imagine reading a book covering seven hundred years of Irish history and the thing that catches your imagination is a hairy spider dance! I shall be getting my copy forthwith!
Lastly, Adam labours for us under the Idol of Crom Cruach, the blood thirsty pagan god, to cast a light on his cruel demands and his eventual overthrow by St Patrick, which ushers in the Christian dawn, a whole new mythology for the Irish.
St Patrick and The Pigs
Main Article – by Tom O’Rahilly
When St Patrick plucked a three-leaf shamrock to explain how there can be three gods in one, he made a complex concept appear both simple and accessible. He knew his audience and showed how they could explain this concept to others in a time when there was no mass media, only word of mouth.
Our desire for simple explanations has not changed, but the simple is rarely easy. Nowadays, audiences are overstimulated. Finding a way to connect and express nuanced concepts requires ever more guile and artifice.
You may know that St Patrick was a welsh captive in Ireland and was forced to tend pigs. It may have been that as an outsider he saw more clearly how to communicate to people so steeped in a culture that they were oblivious to it. We too are immersed, our daily routine meshes our conscious and unconscious, and we accept the status quo. The idea of there being another way shakes our sense of identity and inertia is seen, if not as a virtue, then as a sinecure for our easy existence.
Change isn’t coming, change is here. All around us, the world is shifting politically and environmentally. Little by little, the natural order is drifting away into something less benign.
When seasons change, it doesn’t happen overnight, we don’t wake up one morning to find the trees bare, leaves on the ground and flocks of migrating birds overhead. It happens bit by bit, and we mark these days with rituals and holidays.
Our culture prepares us for cycles of change, but the coming world is not something we have experienced before. It is time now for a new paradigm and a message as different and as starkly simple as three gods in one.
Whoever comes will reveal some common object in a new light and must bend down to our level, for as every swineherd knows pigs can’t look up.
Ireland’s Hidden Histories
Book Review – by Paudie Holly
Ireland’s Hidden Histories by Frank Hopkins is the kind of book you can dip into for five minutes and somehow still be reading an hour later. Hopkins, a Ringsend native who’s also known for Hidden Dublin, has put together 365 short vignettes — one for every day of the year — covering Irish history and lore in all its strange, dark and often hilarious detail.
The stories stretch from as far back as the thirteenth century right up to the mid–twentieth, but this isn’t a greatest-hits tour of Irish history. Hopkins deliberately swerves the well-known events and familiar heroes. Instead, he shines a light on the overlooked, the unlucky and the downright bizarre. Many of the entries focus on the poor and powerless, particularly in their dealings with the Empire’s authorities, and those stories can be bleak. Still, there’s a sharp, dry humour running through the book that stops it ever becoming heavy-going.
The sections dealing with the Great Famine stand out. They’re sobering, carefully handled and clearly meticulously researched, but never overblown. Hopkins trusts the material and lets the facts speak, which somehow makes them hit harder.
There’s also a running theme that suggests the Irish have always been slightly obsessed with animals. Horses, dogs, livestock — and, for reasons known only to the author, an astonishing number of rats. There are far too many rat stories. Not that this is entirely a complaint; it becomes part of the book’s odd charm.
One of the most enjoyable entries (for this reader anyway) is February 17th, featuring Lola Montez and her infamous tarantula dance. It’s dramatic, chaotic and perfectly suited to Hopkins’ style. A personal favourite line sums up that theatrical madness: “the history of the stage in Ireland is littered with instances of mayhem and violence.” That mix of scholarship and sly wit runs through the whole collection.
The research behind the book is impressive, but it never feels showy. Hopkins clearly loves digging up strange archival gems, including what may be the first reference many readers will see to a living man described as being in a state of “putrisolution” — a word so grotesque it almost demands to be read aloud.
If there’s one small gripe, it’s that the book could really have done with an appendix of places, given how many towns and corners of Ireland get a mention. It would make it easier to keep track.
That aside, there’s very little negative to say. It’s very funny, occasionally morose, consistently surprising and packed with stories you won’t have heard before. Ireland’s Hidden Histories proves that Irish history isn’t just dramatic — it’s often downright strange.
St. Patrick, Crom Cruach, and the End of Pagan Power in Ireland
Article – By Adam Matthews
Long before Saint Patrick arrived in Ireland, the land was said to have suffered under the shadow of the dark idol Crom Cruach. In one ancient legend, Ireland’s beloved king Tigernmas is forced to tolerate Crom Cruach after the Fomor threaten war. Though the king resists, the idol’s curse brings famine, fear, and eventually human sacrifice. Salvation only comes when the god of light, Lugh, destroys Crom Cruach with a divine spear, restoring balance to the land. In this telling, pagan Ireland is rescued by one god overthrowing another.
The later Christian legends tell a similar story – but with a crucial difference. This time, the usurper is not a pagan god, but Saint Patrick himself.
According to medieval tradition, Crom Cruach the Pagan God of pre-Christian Ireland was worshipped at Magh Slécht, the ‘Plain of Prostrations. It was said people came to pay homage to the Idol of Crom surrounded by twelve lesser idols and this was paid in a tribute of crops, livestock, and even the blood of firstborn children. Like the earlier Tigernmas tale, fear and famine dominate the story with Ireland’s people caughtr in a cycle of terror and appeasement.
When Patrick arrives, he does not negotiate as Tigernmas did, nor does he seek help from another god. Instead, Patrick confronts Crom Cruach directly. In the Dindshenchas, he shatters the idol with a hammer; in The Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick, he strikes it with the Bachal Ísu, the Staff of Jesus and the surrounding idols sink into the earth. Where Tigernmas compromised and paid dearly, Patrick refuses to submission entirely.
The contrast is striking. Tigernmas represents pagan Ireland at its most human – generous, flawed, and ultimately powerless against a darker god. Patrick represents a new authority. He does not replace Crom Cruach with another deity in the old sense; he eradicates the idol’s power and reframes Ireland’s spiritual order.
Yet folklore hints that nothing is ever fully erased. Crom Cruach later survives as Crom Dubh, a diminished harvest figure sometimes described as Patrick’s servant. This suggests that Patrick’s triumph was not destructive but transformational. By breaking idols and absorbing old beliefs, Saint Patrick reshaped Ireland itself – ending an age of fear and ushering in a new mythic imagination under Christianity.
That’s all from us this month!
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– The Storytellers
