17th March 2019 - Happy St Patrick's Day

Thought for the day:"If you cross poison ivy with a four-leaf clover, do you get a rash of good luck?"

I didn't know that!!

For most of the 20th century, Saint Patrick’s Day was considered a strictly religious holiday in Ireland, which meant that the nation’s pubs were closed for business on March 17. (The one exception went to beer vendors at the big national dog show, which was always held on Saint Patrick’s Day.) In 1970, the day was converted to a national holiday, and the stout resumed flowing.

Why? Ireland is heavily Catholic, and St. Patrick's Day falls during Lent, which means that although celebratory feasts and drinks were allowed, an all-night party seemed a little too sinful. Fearing excessive drinking, Ireland introduced a law that forced all pubs to close on March 17. Luckily for beermakers, the law was repealed in 1961.

In Irish lore, Saint Patrick gets credit for driving all the snakes out of Ireland. Modern scientists suggest that the job might not have been too hard – according to the fossil record, Ireland has never been home to any snakes. Through the Ice Age, Ireland was too cold to host any reptiles, and the surrounding seas have staved off serpentine invaders ever since. Modern scholars think the “snakes” Saint Patrick drove away were likely metaphorical.

According to Irish legend, Saint Patrick wasn’t originally called Patrick. His birth name was Maewyn Succat, but he changed his name to Patricius after becoming a priest. Patrick, or Patricius derives from the Latin term for "father figure".

Saint Patrick's color was blue, not green, say historians. The hue — St. Patrick's blue, a lighter shade — can still be seen on ancient Irish flags and was used on armbands and flags by members of the Irish Citizen Army, whose 1916 Easter Rising attempted to end British rule. But the use of green on St. Patrick's Day began during the 1798 Irish Rebellion, when the clover became a symbol of nationalism and the "wearing of the green" on lapels became regular practice. The green soon spread to uniforms as well. That evolution, combined with the idea of Ireland's lush green fields, eventually made blue a thing of the past.

Blarney Stone:

It's supposed to give you "the gift of gab," but it can also give you a stiff neck — and countless germs. The Blarney Stone is a must-see tourist destination in Blarney Castle, near Cork, Ireland, and 400,000 visitors line up every year to kiss it in hopes of boosting their eloquence. But it isn't so easy to smooch the stone — you must sit on a ledge while someone holds down your legs, then bend over backward while holding iron rails until your face is level with the stone. Congrats, you've now kissed a surface similarly kissed by hundreds of thousands of others. Hopefully the gift of gab is worth the bacteria.
I will have a green one - thank you

Cheers, or rather Sláinte