St. Patrick, Banisher of Snakes?

While most of us being in a Herpetology class have nothing against snakes that's not true for a lot of people. Snakes often incite an unreasonable amount of fear in people and many outlandish legends have arisen because of this fear. It seems that snakes have a part in St. Patties day or at least in the story of the Saint that this holiday celebrates. Legend has it that this Saint was responsible for spreading Christianity throughout Ireland and for ridding the land of snakes. Unfortunately for those of us that think snakes are really cool the legend says that he was able to banish all the snakes from Ireland by driving them into the sea...awful, right? Although this is a popular legend supported throughout Ireland in popular children's tales and songs, it seems that this just isn't true (imagine that). According to many biologists and herpetologists and Russel McLendon snakes were actually never found in Ireland. In an article by McLendon he provides several reasons why snakes couldn't live in Ireland in the first place. 

Mclendon explains that around 100 million years ago when snakes first evolved Ireland was still under water making it impossible for them to slither their way over to the land of the Leprechauns. By the time Ireland emerged from under the water if snakes had of found their way to this new land they would have not been able to survive because of the cold temperatures and very frozen ground. Eventually this icy land mass thawed around 15,000 years ago. So why aren't there any snakes? The ocean posed a great problem for snakes to migrate to Ireland from surrounding areas. So today Ireland is one of 5 major landmasses without snakes. 

 Now that we know that Ireland has in fact never had snakes McLendon explains in his article why St. Patrick is given credit for ridding Ireland of snakes they never had. He says that the legend comes from the fact that St. Patrick is known to have brought Christianity to Ireland. With the rise of Christianity in Ireland there came a diminish in the worship of Celtic deities. According to McLendon many of these Celtic deities were associated with snake symbols. So it seems that St. Patrick did drive out the snakes in Ireland but only the symbolic ones associated with pagan gods and goddesses. 

In this article McLendon goes on to tell why snakes are important and to point out some of the good things they do. I'm glad that he took the time to provide a list of the benefits that come with having snakes in an environment because so often seen in a negative light.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/what-did-st-patrick-have-against-snakes