HAPPY ST.PATRICK'S DAY!

Before you can "wear the green,'" you must first "find the green"—and that's often rather problematic hereabouts this time of year. I may not be able to locate a shamrock today, but no matter the season, if I want to see some lush Irish green, all I have to do is visit this watercress-lined spring just up the road. 

Long before "going green" became a marketing mantra, we Irish folk have been participating in the "wearin’ of the green” every March 17th. But like a lot of things which once held a deeper meaning, the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day has lately gotten rather silly. I’d like to think it’s the wannabe Irish who’ve messed this up. Surely no true son or daughter of Erin—even those several generations removed—would disgrace the Emerald Isle by eating green spaghetti or swilling beer the color of bile. 

However, for me the final insult occurred the other day when I saw a merchandise display of St. Paddy's Day buttons, banners, and green plastic derby hats—all sporting four-leafed shamrocks! 

Enough is enough! No wonder banshees wail! 

The shamrock is the national emblem of Ireland. It is a trifoliate plant, which means it has three leaves—not four, as some botanically illiterate hack artists apparently envision. As a symbol the shamrock is revered because of a British bishop named Patrick, who came to Ireland early in the Fourth Century. When it comes to action-packed slam-bang exploits, St. Patrick would give today’s superheroes a run for their money. 

The adventurous St. Patrick is credited with, among other things, converting the Irish to Christianity—in the process overcoming the influence of the Druids and driving all snakes into the sea. Because it had three leaves, St. Patrick used the shamrock during his teachings to illustrate the Doctrine of the Trinity. 

The shamrock gets its name from the Irish word “seamrog” or trefoil, which again translates into “three-leaved plant.” Though there is some question as to the original true shamrock, most candidates mentioned are either clovers or cloverlike plants. The vote is about equally divided among woodsorrel, common white clover, black medic, and a trailing hopclover. All these plants, as well as the occasionally considered red clover, are similar in appearance. 

When I was a kid, I remember stores in my neighborhood often sold little packets of imported shamrocks just prior to St. Patricks’s Day. No offspring of an Irishman would dare go to school or work on the blessed day lacking this traditional adornment. I could have easily picked a sprig of sorrel from my mother’s flower bed. Her plantings grew along the south side of the house, against the warm, protected lee of the foundation. There was almost always a clump of sorrel available—and I’d have been reasonably authentic in my selection. Instead, I took a few coins—earned by collecting pop bottles from roadside ditches and cashing them in at two cents apiece—down to the local variety store and shelled out for the genuine article, whatever it was. This shamrock was proudly affixed to my coat or sweater, and I could feel my kinship stretching back through misty time to a land I’d never seen but loved dearly nonetheless. 

Alas, I haven’t seen imported shamrocks offered for sale in years. Today, if I can't find a handy patch of sorrel, I may indeed have to resort to some lifeless imitation shamrock. In this techno-homogenized era, the genuine symbolic gesture is becoming harder to accomplish with each passing decade. 

So, just for today, we Irish will allow the rest of you to pretend your veins contain a wee drop of Celtic blood. You can don your funny green hats, drink your green beer, even surprise your mate with a pair of dancing-leprechaun undershorts. But I beg you to draw the line somewhere this side of botanical authenticity…please don’t go wearing any four-leaf shamrocks.

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THE GREEN EYE

Tiz again St. Patrick’s Day. And since we Irish are a friendly, generous lot, just for today we’ll grant the rest of you—Irish wannabes, the heritage impaired, anyone who'd like to join in the fun—naturalized citizenship, and thereupon temporarily claim you for our own. You can put on a funny green hat. Eat green spaghetti. Quaff green-tinted beer. Even surprise your mate with a pair of dancing-leprechaun under-shorts—and all the while, pretend your veins contain a wee drop of Celtic blood. But should you elect to participate in the “wearin’ o’ the green,” when choosing your shamrock, I make this request…please draw the line on the side of authenticity. I say this because I stopped recently to browse a local retailer’s display of St. Patrick’s Day merchandise. The selection included everything from tee-shirts, to party hats, mugs, balloons, greeting cards, rolls of streamers and bunting, bumper stickers, pens, and metal badges with funny sayings. What suddenly had me seeing green wasn’t the fact that most items incorporated a shamrock into their design, but that many of the emblazoned shamrocks sported four leaves. Four-leafed clovers aren’t shamrocks…they’re simply a sham. No wonder banshees wail! Whether this represented a case of artistic license or botanic ignorance, I couldn’t say. But—and I emphasize—shamrocks are not four-leafed clovers. In fact, the whole point of the original shamrock was the plant's trifoliolate (three-part) leaves. According to history, sometime in the 5th century, St. Patrick—the missionary bishop who later became Ireland's beloved patron saint—paused during a sermon and plucked a shamrock from the verdant ground. The Christian church was newly arrived thereabouts, and some of its notions were puzzling to the Emerald Isle's pagans. Patrick used the shamrock to illustrate theological teachings regarding the rather puzzling Doctrine of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three separate elements existing as a single entity. Just as the shamrock had three leaflets on one stem. That’s how the shamrock came to be venerated in Ireland and by Irish people the world over. And why on St. Patrick's Day—March 17, the day St. Patrick died in A.D. 491—Irish folks celebrate and remember by the "wearin' o' the green." The identity of the actual shamrock remains something of a mystery. Plants most often cited as the "true shamrock" are the white clover (Trifolium repens), the black medic (Medicago lupulina), a hop clover (Trifolium procumbens), and wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella.) All four are trefoils—plants with leaves composed of three leaflets—and fairly similar in appearance. Any one makes a fine and arguably authentic shamrock. I favor wood sorrel, simply because there was a good stand growing beside the south-facing basement wall of my boyhood home. As a kid, come St. Paddy’s Day, my mother would send me outside to pluck a sprig for my lapel before heading off to school. Moreover, I've always liked the sour-tart taste of sorrel and often nibble on a leafy stem during walks, or add a handful to salads. How many other lapel decorations do you know that are good to eat? Here along the river, I’ve not yet found a handy patch of wood sorrel from which to pick a stem or two. No matter, I’m not in a party mood anyway—what with the fact of a funeral yesterday. I opted instead for a visit to a certain pool—a small spring hole which wells mysteriously from the earth in the middle of a nearby wood. The pool never freezes, remaining open throughout the coldest months. I go there often during the winter because the pool is filled with watercress, thus offering a vision of needed green when all the rest of the world appears otherwise bleak. I think of this place as the Green Eye. What always strikes me is how intensely green the watercress appears—not the velvety emerald green of new grass, or the electric yellow-green of the willows, but a bright, vibrant green, which even on the darkest morning, fills me with the absolute certainty of resurrection. So today—this morning—I celebrate by standing quietly beside the Green Eye, reassured in the knowledge that spring will come, that life will go on…that faith and hope are not in vain.