The feast of the Annunciation, 25 March, also known in many areas as “Lady Day in March”, is one of the three “Lady Days” which are widely celebrated across Ireland, the other two being Candlemas which falls on 2 February and Harvest Lady Day which falls on 15 August. The date is observed in memory of the visit to the Virgin Mary by the Archangel Gabriel at which she discovered she would be the mother of the son of God, Jesus Christ.
If the Feast of the Annunciation fell in Lent the obligations of the Lentern season were relaxed. The day was a social occasion with many attending patrons and fairs, which were often the sites of boisterous behaviour. In 1816 the Reverend James Neligan who was Rector and Victor in the Parish of Kilmactigue in County Sligo complained that while all types of work were avoided on the three Lady Days no efforts were made by the local population to ‘refrain from sports, pastimes, cursing or swearing, or frequenting tippling houses, and drinking to excess.’
While traditionally the Feast of the Annunciation has strong religious and social associations, the feast also had a civic significance. Kevin Danaher points out that before the introduction of the Georgian Calendar in 1752 the 25 March was the official start of the year, and therefore a day when rent was due, known as a “Gale Day” in Ireland. Rents were generally collected twice a year in the times when landlords were plentiful, the most popular “Gale Days” fell on the first of May and the first of November, however, in some areas including parts of Kilkenny and Leitrim up until at least the end of the nineteenth century the 25 March and 29 September (Michaelmas) were still the preferred days for collecting rent and beginning contracts. Possibly because the Feast of the Annunciation fell on a “Gale Day” bad weather was expected to occur, while if the feast fell on the same day as Easter Sunday, according to Kevin Danaher, the “people feared that the following harvest would be poor.”
Sources:
Danaher, Kevin. The Year in Ireland. Dublin 1972.
Folklore Journal, 1894.
Mac Lir, Mananaan. ‘The Folklore of Months’. Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, Second series II (1896), 157, 316, 365.
Mason, William Shaw. A Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland. Dublin, London and Edinburgh, 1814-19.
Throughout the spring it is a common sight to see magpies gathering materials for their nests, and one would imagine that this annual ritual has continued in Ireland since long before the coming of Christ. However, there is plenty of evidence that indicates that the magpie is a relatively recent arrival to our island. It was a well-known belief amongst our ancestors that the magpie was introduced to Ireland by a storm that brought a flock of these birds to Wexford from England. There may well be some truth in this belief – as the renowned Belfast born ornithologist Edward Allworthy Armstrong noted the following details in his childhood memoir Birds of the Grey Wind; ‘All our Irish magpies are believed to be descended from a flock of about a dozen birds from England which were blown out of their course by an easterly gale and arrived exhausted on the coast of Wexford about the year 1676. An English settler there, one Robert Leigh, writing in 1684, says that ‘about eight years ago there landed in these parts . . . a parcel of magpies which now breed’.’ Further on Armstrong continues by explaining that within fifty years, or by the 1720s, ‘a statute’, the first of its kind in Ireland, ‘was enacted offering a reward for their [magpies] destruction.’ This statute was, of course unsuccessful as evidenced by the widespread distribution of magpies throughout Ireland today. However if we even go back to less than a century ago, and even in the memory of people who are still living, the distribution of this bird species is remembered as far more regional than it is today.
In the Irish language the magpie is referred to by several different names, many of which provide evidence of the bird’s recent arrival to Ireland. Probably the most common Irish name for a magpie is ‘snag breac,’ which can be translated as pied or speckled tree-creeper. Prior to the arrival of the magpie this name was applied to the great spotted woodpecker which has recently returned to this island after an absence of many centuries; with its original decline coinciding with the arrival of the magpie. The second most common Irish language name for a magpie is Frangach, of course this word was originally used to identify a French person, and later was applied to the rats that made their way to Ireland bringing the Black Death, which spread from the east coast of Ireland, spreading west as the magpie would go on to do a few centuries later.
Despite the magpie’s relatively recent arrival there is a wealth of Irish folklore relating to these birds which continues to this day to be passed on from one generation to the next. The Irish have a strange mixture of respect and distain for these loud and distinctive birds who now reside in every part of the country. Probably the most widespread belief about magpies is that they steal shiny objects to put in their nests and to attract a mate. In recent decades observational experiments conducted by scientists have proven that magpies do not favour shiny objects over dull objects. However, the magpie’s reputation as a thief is still believed as fact by young and old who can recall the stories that have existed for centuries, and paint the magpie as a lover of shiny objects.
Another belief, which is far more difficult to disprove, is that bad luck will follow a person who fails to salute a magpie. To this day many people throughout Ireland will give a nod, raise their hat, or lift their hand to salute a magpie that they encounter. The situation in which one encounters a magpie as Lady Wilde, the mother of the famous writer Oscar Wilde, noted holds particular significance. She warned that if a magpie ‘comes clattering to your door it is a sign of death’ and that if the magpie comes to your door and faces you ‘is a sure death-sign, and nothing can avert the doom.’ However, Wilde goes on to explain that if two magpies come clattering at your door ‘prosperity will follow.’ This altering change in fortune depending on the number of magpies a person encounters should be familiar to any Irish person from the variants of an old rhyme which have survived in Ireland’s oral tradition to the present day:
‘One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret that is never told.’
The rhyme itself was first published in 1780, although like many others it is believed to be much older. Irish versions of the rhyme were published in the nineteenth century for instance a variant can be found in Lady Wilde’s Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland:
‘One for Sorrow,
Two for Mirth,
Three for Marriage,
Four for a Birth.’
While in his 1909 book English as we Speak it in Ireland, Patrick Weston Joyce recorded this slightly different version in word if not in meaning that was given to him by a Wexford man named Patrick MacCall:
‘One for sorrow; two for a mirth; three for a wedding; four for a birth.’
Irish sources from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century provide some less remembered and possibly more regional folklore about magpies. As with many birds in Ireland the season of spring, as the nesting period, represents a particularly busy time for magpies, which is reflected in Irish folklore. For example, the 14 February,* is believed by some to be the date when magpies get married, while in an 1881 article from the Folklore Journal GH Kinahan noted that ‘It is considered unlucky to kill a magpie in the spring, as its comrade will kill every chicken. In the west of Ireland they protect the magpies, as they give warning when a fox is a-foot and about the homestead. I have often heard smothered curses from an old crone when I shot a magpie, especially in co. Mayo.’ Such respect for the common magpie may have been regional as growing up in Clonmany, County Donegal, Charles McGlinchey noted that himself and his friends ‘never thought it any harm to rob the nests of magpies or crows for they lifted eggs and young chickens.’
*This piece of Irish folklore though often associated with magpies in particular is also applied to birds more generally.
Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March, traditionally marks the middle of spring, and is sometimes referred to as the end of winter, with the belief that there is a noticeable improvement in the weather from that date onwards; an old saying attributed to Saint Patrick claimed that the weather would be fine for half of his own feast day and for every day after. Saint Patrick’s Day holds great significance in rural areas of the country, partially due to the perceived improvement in the weather, but also because it is the traditional day for farmers to begin planting their crops, an older counterpart to this tradition linked Saint Patrick’s Day with the separation of farming families and may have encouraged the days connection with the commencement of work in the fields; Charles McGlinchey, from Ballyliffen in Donegal, recalled that in his grandfather’s time, circa 1800, ‘people in different parts of the parish used to take their cattle and pigs to the mountains in the summer months. It was only the women and children went, and Patrick’s Day was the time for setting out. They built huts to live in called bothógs and the remains of these bothógs and some old pig houses can be seen about the hills yet.’
Shamrocks have continued to be the most enduring and popular embalm to wear on Saint Patrick’s Day. Their association with the saint can be found in a well-known legend which tells of how Saint Patrick used the three leaves of the shamrock to explain the holy trinity to the pagan Irish. Shamrocks are traditionally worn by both males and females on Saint Patrick’s Day, with females attaching cloisters of shamrocks to their right shoulder or breast, of the jacket or blouse they happen to be wearing, while for males the three leaf clovers were either worn on their hats or through the button-holes of their shirts and jackets. As an alternative to shamrocks Saint Patrick Crosses were previously worn in honour of the saint. These home-made crosses were traditionally constructed from a variety of materials including paper, card, silk, or satin, and typically were decorated with strips of ribbon and coloured paper. A short description of the construction of Saint Patrick’s Crosses was provided by John O’Hanlon in his 1870 work Irish Folk Lore; ‘usually composed of a card-paper, cut round, and covered with white silk or satin. Stripes of gay and party-coloured silk ribbon are crossed over this underwork, and elegantly fringed or tasselled, according to the wearer’s taste or fancy.’ St. Patrick’s Crosses continued to be worn on the clothing of females and children of both sexes into the early years of the twentieth century.
Despite always falling in Lent Saint Patrick’s Day seems to have been generally perceived as exempt from the fasting restrictions observed during Lentern period, with feasting often greater on Saint Patrick’s Day than on nearly any other day in the year. The Donegal writer Patrick MacGill recalled that when he was a child, at the end of the nineteenth century, Saint Patrick’s Day was one of four days in the year when meat was eaten in his Glenties household. As Saint Patrick’s Day marks the death of Saint Patrick it is hardly surprising that drinking on the day has remained as much of a feature of the day for centuries as it has at Irish wakes up until the present day. A special phrase to denote having a drink on Saint Patrick’s Day is Póta Padraig, translated to Patrick’s Pot, while the tradition of ‘Drowning the Shamrock’, involves the wearer removing the shamrock from the item of clothing, where it has been attached all day, and placing it in the last glass of whiskey, porter or stout at the end of evening. A toast is then made, and with the drink consumed, the shamrock is then thrown over the left shoulder to encourage luck.
As Saint Patrick is the primary patron saint of Ireland it is hardly surprising that a large number of traditions and customs are carried out on the 17 of March to venerate and celebrate the saint credited with converting the heathen Irish to Christianity and ridding the county of snakes. In recognition pilgrimages and patrons were once held on Saint Patrick’s Day to sites in nearly every part of the county. In 1923 the antiquarian Thomas J Westropp claimed that the greatest patterns were held on Caher Island and Croagh Patrick, in County Mayo, and at Downpatrick in County Down. The observances associated with Saint Patrick’s Day have increasingly become more concerned with celebrating Irishness than in venerating and celebrating the saint. This change has been gradual with parades, originally civic and in more recent decades carnivalesque, becoming the main feature of Saint Patrick’s Day in Irish towns and cities since the end of the nineteenth century.
Sources
Mason, William Shaw. A Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland. Dublin, London and Edinburgh, 1814-19.
MacGill, Patrick. Children of the Dead End: the Autobiography of a Navvy. London, 1914.
Mc Glinchey, Charles. The Last of the Name. Edited by Brian Friel. Belfast, 1986.
O’Donoghue, John. In Kerry Long Ago. London, 1960
O’Hanlon, John (Lageniensis). Irish Folk Lore: Traditions and Superstitions of the Country; with Humorous Tales. London, 1870.
Omorethi. ‘Customs Peculiar to Certain Days, Previously Observed in County Kildare.’ Journal of the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society and Surrounding Districts V (1906-1908), 439-454.
Painting ‘Saint Patrick’s Day, 1867’, by Charles Henry Cook.
Illustration of Saint Patrick Cross from the Journal of the Historical and Archaeological Society, 1906-1908.
In Ireland all types of weather including strong winds, heavy rain, sunshine, and even the icy conditions of winter are associated with the month of March. The erratic weather that invariably accompanies March, particularly the earlier half of the month, made a deep impression on the imaginations and lives of previous generations who lived closer to the land and the changing seasons. References to the strong winds of March are well known in Ireland; the Donegal writer Seamus MacManus described the noise produced during particularly heated bargaining at cattle markets of the late eighteen hundreds as resembling the roaring of east and the west winds going through the Barnesmore Gap in the Blue Stack Mountains on the first day of March, while John O’Donoghue, who grew up in County Kerry in the opening years of the twentieth century, noted that the old people in his young days feared the harsh winds of March often associating them like the howl of a banshee as an omen of death.
If dry weather preceded the month of March it was taken as an omen that March would be a wet month that year; as Amhlaoimh Ó Súilleabháin noted in his 1831 diary ‘if the pools aren’t full before March, March itself will fill them.’ From St Patrick’s Day, which in Ireland is traditionally perceived as the middle of spring, it is traditionally believed that the weather improves. An old Irish saying attributed to Saint Patrick claims that the weather would be fine for half of his own feast day and for every day after. As if to prove the point the winter of 1947 popularly known as “the Big Snow” or “White 47” for the icy and blizzardous conditions that continued from late January till March, when the snow finally ceased on Saint Patrick’s Day.
Despite the promise of more settled weather from Saint Patrick’s Day, unsettled weather was often known to continue into April, with the first three days of that month often referred to as ‘Borrowing Days’, explained by the following legend, ‘an old cow on the 31st March began to curse and swear at March, tossing her tail in the air, and saying to the devil, I pitch you – you are gone and April has come, and now I will have grass. March, however, was too much for her, and he borrowed three days from April, during which time he made such bad weather the old cow died.’
Sources
Kinahan, GH. ‘Notes on Irish Folklore’. The Folk-Lore Record 4 (1881),
MacManus, Seamus. The Rocky Road to Dublin. Dublin, 1938.
O’Donoghue, John. In a Quiet Land. London, 1959.
Ó Síocháin, Conchúr. The Man from Cape Clear: The Life of an Islandman. Translated from the Irish by Riobard P Breatnach. Cork and Dublin, 1975.
Ó Súilleabháin, Amhlaoibh. The Diary of an Irish Countryman 1827 – 1835. Translated from the Irish by Tomás de Bhaldraithe. Cork/Dublin 1970/1979.
Top painting is titled ‘Wanderer in the Storm’ by Julius Von Leyold, 1835
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