#i am once again recommending the movie PILGRIMAGE (2017) for a dramatic story about the conflict between insular and catholic christianity

[actualmermaid]

So, one of the legends of St. Patrick is that he "drove the snakes out of Ireland." No one really knows what this means, because there are no snakes that are native to Ireland. The settler pagan version is that the snakes represent the pagans, and that Patrick ethnically cleansed them from the island.

This isn't actually true--there were pagan High Kings of Ireland long after Patrick's death. Celtic/British Insular Christianity is actually very ancient as far as Christian history goes, and it was kind of weird and syncretic for a long time, so it's anachronistic to think of Christianity arriving in Ireland in the same way that the fully-developed Roman Catholic Church came to the Americas in the 1500s.

Early Irish churches had some contact with African Christianity. There are snakes in Africa.

So, I'm imagining an early Irish monk traveling to a monastery in North Africa to study some manuscripts. One morning, he gets up to go to prayers, and sees a BIG SNAKE with FANGS in his way and he's like "OH GOD DELIVER ME FROM THE SERPENTS OF THE WASTELAND etc etc etc"

(He asks the African monks why God had not banished the serpents as He had banished the devil from Eden, and the monks are like "idk dude")

So he goes back home to Ireland and tells everyone about the SERPENTS and DRAGONS and COCKATRICES and HYDRAS etc that live in Africa. The peasants are like "wow, I'm so glad we don't have those here, the fairies are enough to handle already" and the monk is like "I KNOW, RIGHT?"

So they come up with a just-so story: St. Patrick drove out the serpents of Ireland! Thank you, St. Patrick! We love you!