Luck o’ the Irish to you! Today’s post is a mashup of fun jokes, factoids, pictures, and links to brighten your St. Paddy’s Day Monday. I’ll leave the green beer and bar-hopping to you more adventurous types. 😉
Facts and Tidbits:
Did you know St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish? He was born in Britain (387 AD), abducted at age 16, and taken to Ireland as a slave. He later managed to escape and return home. After converting to Christianity, he went back to Ireland as a Christian missionary.
Most of you are familiar with the legend of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. The fact is, there never were any snakes, because post-glacial Ireland became separated from Britain and surrounded by water from melting glaciers well before any snakes could migrate from more temperate areas.
Tell that to the artists who have drawn the saint over the centuries:
Eww, right?
The celebration of St. Patrick’s Day with special food, wearing o’ the green, drinking, and parades first started in the United States, not Ireland. New York’s yearly St. Paddy’s Day parade is the biggest of them all.
Speaking of drinking (that’s what we were talking about, right?): until recently (40 or so years ago), there was no public drinking in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day. It was considered primarily a holy day, and all the pubs were shut down. As to how the faithful were honoring their saint in private is another matter. *wink* That law was overturned in 1970.
Jokes:
Q: Why do people wear shamrocks on St. Patrick’s Day?
A: Regular rocks are too heavy.
Q: What do you get when you cross poison ivy with a four-leaf clover?
A: A rash of good luck.
Cheers…And may ye be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows yer dead…
Murphy was selling his house, and put the matter in an agent’s hands. The agent wrote up a sales blurb for the house that made wonderful reading.
After Murphy read it, he turned to the agent and asked, “Have I got all you say there?”
The agent said, Certainly ye have…Why do you ask?
Murphy replied, “Cancel the sale, the place sounds grand to me.”
Links:
9 Surprising Facts You May Not Know About St. Patrick and the Irish Holiday
History of St. Patrick’s Day (with a cool visual)
NPR: The Dark History of Green Food on St. Patrick’s Day
Have a wonderful St. Paddy’s Day! May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. We’ve got snow here, LOL.
~Kathy
P.S. – Stay tuned tomorrow, when I post the winners of the book tour!
Fun post today KB! Love the Indiana Jones reference!
Have a wonderful St Patrick’s Day. May the luck o’ the Irish be with you!
Thanks Phil! You, too! 😉
And this ties in nicely with my post today. http://wp.me/1WFZU
Thanks for sharing the fun jokes and trivia. Happy St. Pat’s to you my friend.
Patricia Rickrode
w/a Jansen Schmidt
Happy St. Pat’s to you as well, sweetie. Thanks for the link; I hadn’t gotten over there before I put this together. Looks like we were channeling each other, LOL. 😉
Great mash-up, Kathy. That is my all time line/blessing…whatever it is: May ye be in Heaven half an hour before the devil knows yer dead. 😀
It’s a memorable line, isn’t it? Thanks for visiting, Kass! 😉
Thanks for the fun facts. I’m ScotIrish which is almost a dirty word in Ireland. It’s from when the Brits pulled land out from under the Irishmen and resold it to settlers from Scotland.
Some of those grudges die hard, Sharla Rae, but I’m sure glad you’re here! Hope you had a fun St. Pat’s. 😉