Irish Snakes and a Saint in a Snit

 My illustrations for the 2025 Year of the Snake Useful Calendar are coming along gradually—although I have managed to complete about half of them so far. Here's a look at one.

For March, I wanted to depict Saint Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, which is, as you may know, total bunk. More on that below.

I looked at several classic depictions of the patron saint of Ireland, including some where he's pointing at some sorry-looking snakes cowering at his feet, but in my sympathy-for-the-snakes mindset, I kept imagining a defiant snake being banished by an authoritarian saint who had had it with their attitude. 

All of which made me think of the Queen of Hearts confronting Alice, who does not look cowed, as illustrated by John Tenniel, when the queen is pointing and yelling, "Off with her head!"

I imagined the saint getting similarly fed up with a sassy Irish snake and its impudence.

The fossil record shows that there never were any snakes in Ireland, and the story that Patrick drove them away first appeared in the 12th century, invented by an English monk named Jocelin of Furness, who also amplified earlier stories about how Patrick slayed Druids by invoking the power of God the Smiter, which had been invented by another hagiographer in the seventh century. Patrick, who lived in the fourth century, was literate and left behind his own story, known as his "Confessio," in which he does not mention Druids or snakes, but I guess that just wasn't exciting enough. 

So my sassy Irish snake is purely a figment of my imagination. But then, the snakes in the traditional depictions of Patrick driving them away can only be figments of those artists' imaginations, too. 

To some modern pagans, the "snakes" are a metaphor for the Druids who, they say, were driven underground or slaughtered by Patrick and his comrades. But there are so many problems with that, beginning with an absence of anything in the historical record associating Irish Druids with snakes either physically or symbolically. As described on the website Irish Central, Druids were more like scholars and keepers of oral tradition than occultists or magicians.

According to Irish Central, St. Patrick and other Christian clerics helped preserve the many oral traditions of the Druids by writing them down. It's because of them that we know anything about the laws, mythologies, and histories established long before Christianity showed up on the island. 

Which means that I am being unfair to the good and probably mild-mannered saint in my depiction of him. But why let a few historical facts get in the way of a good story, right? At least I'm being transparent about the alternative facts here! For more on what can be known about the actual history of St. Patrick and the Druids, read this blog (which cites sources) and this commentary (which calls on many of the same sources). 

"I've had it with your attitude!"