"COLUMN ONE"
By Mary Mayo, Editor

If you are a son, or even a great grandchild of the Auld Sod you are immensely sentimental about next Saturday because, begorra, it marks the birth date of one Patricius Succetus Magonus Cothirthiaus.

The mere fact that were the man present on the day he would celebrate 1,573 years of life is not important at all . . . can you name another mortal whose birth anniversary is commemorative of festive parades held annually in Boston and Philadelphia and Baltimore?

Legend has a sly trick of confusing and coloring the most stolid truth history can produce and if the legend has been nurtured in Ireland you must necessarily use your mathematical genius and "add 1 fact and subtract 999."

But there have been many students of Saint Patrick because they are intrigued by the challenge of separating the man from the legend. These historians agree he was born (probably) in Bannaventa, Taberniae, north of the River Severn in either Scotland or England. At least his mother, and perhaps his father, was Roman and they were well-to-do Christians with the simple British name of Sucat.

When the boy was 16 years old, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates and carried to the wildly beautiful country around Tyrawley, County Mayo, Ireland and set to the task of tending a flock owned by a local chieftan.

It was while watching over these animals (either cattle or swine) as they ranged the rugged hillsides that a vision came to him telling him to escape and he accepted the invitation without any hesitancy.

Several years of high adventure followed, including a long period in France where he entered monastic life and became a devoted Christian. A second vision directed him to return to the scene of his captivity as a missionary to the people of Ireland.

He obeyed the call in 432 and spent the rest of his life working zealously to Christianize those "he found all heathen but left all Christian." He is credited with having founded over 300 churches and having personally baptized 120,000 people.

But despite the great reverence in which the good saint was held by the Irish, they couldn't remain true Irishmen without embroidering and stretching and animating every detail of the life of the man they followed without question and it is these stories based on the folklore of Ireland that have made Saint Patrick the most widely known and celebrated figure in Irish history.

Although the mystic beauty of the land is known from song and story, the truth is that Ireland has always been a poor country. Trade and industry were never among its foremost characteristics and even its rich, fertile soil could not develop a notably sound economy with nothing else much to bolster its potential.

During the Potato Famine of 1846 many thousands fled the poverty of their homeland to migrate to the United States and their belongings consisted chiefly of legend and laughter.

And so America inherited a portion of the Irish wit and sentiment and good humor that brands the Irishmen in every corner of every county in the nation, because he didn't stop in the big Eastern cities where he first set foot or, if he did, his sons pocketed their fair share of their Irish endowments and headed west in their own rights.

And in all these corners in all these counties all over the country next Saturday you'll know the Irishman by his bit of green shamrock because:

"There's a dear little plant that grows in our isle--
'Twas Saint Patrick himself sure that set it;
And the sun on his labors with pleasure did smile,
And with dew from his eye often wet it.
It shines through the bog, through the marsh and the mireland
And he called it the dear little shamrock of Ireland."

And who could end any kind of a tribute to Saint Patrick or Ireland without a Pat and Mike joke, so brace yourself:

Little Pat and big Mike had a dispute when Mike, in contempt, said, 'Ye little runt, Oi could carry yez up to the fifth story in me hod."

Pat immediately took up the bet. "Oi'd loike to see yez try thot same," he snarled, "Oi'll bet yez fifty cents on it."

Before he knew it, Mike had him in his hod and was going up the ladder. When he got to the fourth story his foot slipped and he almost fell. He regained his footing, however, and reached the fifth story in triumph. "Oi won!" he yelled.

"Ye did thot," admitted Pat, "but Oi had high hopes when yer foot slipped!"