St Patrick and a windy tale

THERE is an old Irish saying that goes: La Fheile Padraig lar an earraigh, mar ata an cnamh i lar an scadain ("St Patrick's Day…

THERE is an old Irish saying that goes: La Fheile Padraig lar an earraigh, mar ata an cnamh i lar an scadain ("St Patrick's Day sits in the middle of spring like the bone in the middle of a herring").

At face value, I suppose, the meaning is that our national holiday, occurring 6 1/2 weeks after February 1st, the traditional first day of spring, marks the half way point of that season. It could also be construed, however, as a reference to the fact that the weather of March, and particularly that of St Patrick's Day itself, is notoriously volatile, often bringing a harsh, unwelcome, and sometimes surprising, interruption to the progress of a season that has otherwise been waxing increasingly benign.

Patrick himself was well known for his interest in the weather. When Oisin returned from Tir na nOg, for example, one of the first people he met along the road was the saint himself, who asked him to describe the weather as it was when he, Oisin, was young. The gnarled old man was brief and to the point: "Samhrndh riabhach, fomhar grianach, geimhreadh ceoch agus earrach reoch", he told the saint: the mixture is a still familiar one - "a dull changeable summer, a sunny autumn, followed by a misty winter and a frosty spring".

Patrick, however, was a man of many talents, and had his own unique ways of coping with the meteorological vicissitudes of Irish life:

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Saint Patrick, as in legends told,

The morning being very cold,

In order to assuage the weather,

Collected bits of ice together,

He gently breathed upon the pyre,

And every fragment blazed on fire!

And he also has ways and means of arranging the elements to suit his partoral purposes, with the result that according to age old tradition the winds on St Patrick's Day always follow a prescribed pattern. In the highlands of Scotland, it seems, St Patrick is as much honoured as he is here, his feast day being regarded as the first day of spring. For these reasons, is it Patrick's custom to depart for the Hebrides on the morning of 17th to visit his distant parishioners, and to make the journey easier, he arranges for himself to have a following southerly wind. Later in the day, he arranges that the wind be northerly to facilitate his return journey.