Happy St Patrick's Day: The Return of the Snakes

On St Patrick’s Day I shall, of course, wear green. I will also wear snake earrings big enough to alarm herpephobes.

According to legend, St Patrick drove the snakes out or Ireland or as Dr. George Johnson’s mother put it more poetically, “charmed them into the sea.” With some regret, Dr. Johnson explains that snakes in Ireland did not survive the ice age. By the time the glacier receded, Ireland was an island. And terrestrial snakes, he says, cannot migrate by water.

But then perhaps the snakes Patrick charmed were sea serpents?

Many people contend that these herpe non grata were actually the druids who were known to wear serpent’s eggs as amulets. You might ask, if there were no serpents in Ireland, how the druids got these eggs, but apparently there are snakes in Scotland, a hop, skip, and a puddle jump away.

Saint Brigid, a fellow patron saint of Ireland along with Patrick and Columba, actually heard St. Patrick preach when she was young. Brigid the saint inherited her mantle and much of her lore and iconography from Brigid the goddess. Given the banishment (or extinction) of snakes in Ireland, it’s curious that on St. Brigid’s feast day, February 1, people sang the below song (or variations of it) at least into the 19th century when Alexander Carmichael compiled Carmina Gadelica:

Early on Bride's morn
The serpent shall come from the hole,
I will not molest the serpent,
Nor will the serpent molest me.

Bride is the Scottish version of Brigid’s name, so perhaps this serpent is also Scottish and never encountered St Patrick. Still it is noteworthy that Bride’s serpent, like many in myths and legends the world over, is associated with a goddess. And Patrick was representing a religion that took a dim view of such associations. See Genesis 3. Although Moses did have a staff that he could change into a serpent , and Jesus once admonished his disciples to be “wise as serpents and gentles as doves.”

Serpents and birds, both of which appear in Celtic knotwork, are revered by many peoples as creatures that can go between the worlds, symbolically and literally. This St Patrick’s day, the weather promises to be mild. Just before noon I will go to a nearby spring where garter snakes emerge on the first warm days to sun on the small rock ledge and drink with their tiny flickering tongues from the pool. Many Springs I have sat with the snakes in this place. I have seen their writhing mating dance (the origin of the druid serpent egg) and I have sat long enough that some have glided over my feet without fear. Once I found a dead snake. I buried it under the leaves, and lit some incense. As I sat, maybe twenty snakes from all directions came to sit with me. We sat together till the light and warmth waned and they went their way to their own world.

I had to write about the snakes this week, but next week I promise to deliver on Seven Sex Secrets for Spring. (Or something alliterative like that.) Of course snakes and sex are not unrelated. For more on that relationship, I refer you to “Beneath Bride’s Breast: Chapter Six of Magdalen Rising. There definitely are snakes on Tir na mBan!

A few words from Maeve on words

I've been absent from this blog for six weeks, except in the comment section. Elizabeth's experiment is now complete and we are awaiting results. So I want to say a brief hello. Elizabeth, who pulled her back out (probably as a result of stuffing almost 400 copies of MaevenSong into envelopes last Friday) will not be able to type for me for long today. She and I both welcome topics for future blogs.

Last week Elizabeth wrote about song.When we memorized lessons at druid school the phrase we used was "to sing over." Words went in more quickly and deeply when they were sung rather than spoken. We also used alliteration and rhythm. Even law was poetry, delivered in triads. Centuries before computers, everything was linked to everything else. The letters of our ceremonial alphabet had the names of trees that were associated with moons. We saw the shapes of these letters in the wings of birds in flight. Each finger of each hand represented different branches of story cycles. Everything not only had speech; everything was speech. Inside our skulls (no wonder we revered skulls) were libraries to rival any in the ancient (or modern!)world.

Although Joseph of Arimathea taught me to read and write and though Elizabeth has now written thousands of pages of my story, I continue to feel ambivalent about the written word. Word in print tempts people to literalism, fundamentalism. How many times have you heard people say, "It is written," as if that settled it once and for all. How much trouble has been caused by the Epilogue of the Book of Revelation in which the author proclaims: "This is my solemn attestation to all who hear the prophecies in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him every plague mentioned in this book; if anyone cuts anything out of the prophecies in this book, God will cut off his share of the tree of life and of the holy city, which are described in this book." Editors, beware! Very likely the author meant to refer only to his own manuscript, but some people have taken it to mean there can be no further revelations in the Christian tradition at all. Period.

That said, I want to tell you something I love about the Bible, something I think is brilliant, something people rarely mention, except in scholarly circles. There are four Gospels, and all of them are different! They were written at different times from different traditions for different audiences. If there is only one literal truth and one way of interpreting that truth, why is this so? If the Bible is divinely inspired, what does four versions of the same story say about the nature of divine inspiration?

I'm just saying, I'm just asking. Think about it. It is time for Elizabeth to stop typing and get up and go outside to listen to the speech of trees, how it changes when late light turns the branches orange, and when they groan as they contract with cold. Time to read the flight of birds before they settle for the night. Time to hear the stream sing softly under the ice.

for more about The Maeve Chronicles: www.passionofmarymagdalen.com