MARCH 18: St. Patrick
“Daddy, do tell us this evening more about St. Patrick,” asked Jack and Evelyn.
“He was born in 372,” said daddy. “When he was only sixteen years old he was stolen by pirates. They did not treat him at all well, and he was sold by them into slavery in Ireland.
“His master had him look after pigs in the mountains. But Patrick had a strange dream in which the Lord told him to run away and set out for a far-away country. He had been seven years in Ireland, so he was used to its language and all its customs and manners. After a time he was ordained a deacon, then a priest, and finally he became a bishop. At this point the pope told him to return to Ireland to preach the gospel to the Irish people. Since then he has always been known as St. Patrick. One story is that on a bitter cold morning St. Patrick and a number of his followers found they could not possibly build a fire. They had had no breakfast and were half frozen. St. Patrick listened to their complaints for a while, and then he told them to gather up the snow in a pile. This they did. St. Patrick breathed on it, and it became a fire.
“Another tale is that St. Patrick beat the drum so loudly when driving the snakes out of Ireland that he knocked a hole in it, but that an angel appeared and mended it, so that the drum was afterward kept as a relic.
“It is told that in one part of Ireland from which St. Patrick drove the snakes and toads he chained one huge serpent by a lake called in Irish Lough Dilveen and told him to stay until Monday. The people around the district still claim that every Monday they hear the serpent calling out in the Irish dialect, ‘It’s a long Monday, St. Patrick!’
“St. Patrick is said to have died on the 17th of March, 493, aged 121. His grave is at Dunpatrick, Ireland, and a tombstone now bears his name cut in Irish characters.”