Walking about Armagh there is always cobblestone underfoot. Occasionally, if you are carefully watching the ground, something else will appear—a carving in the stone.  It is a simple symbol, a pointed hat with a Shepard’s hook inside, and it is a signal that you have stumbled upon Saint Patrick’s trail.  The marks of Saint Patrick are all around the city, as it is where Patrick established his ecclesiastic capital in Ireland.  Two towering Cathedrals both named for the saint stand on opposite sides of Armagh, and sites all over town bear his image.  This blatant Christianity led me to wonder about the fates of the native pagan inhabitants of the island, namely the druids, in whom I have always taken interest.  After all, before Armagh was the capital city of both the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland, it was the mythical capital of the kingdom of Ulster, and was even named for the pagan goddess Macha (according to the highly reliable source of Wikapedia, Armagh draws its name from Ard Macha, or Macha’s height).

Regrettably little is known about the druids, as they were forbidden to write down any of their extensive philosophic, scientific, medicinal, and “magical” knowledge for fear it may fall into the wrong hands.  However, in my attempt to dredge up a bit of information on the illusive pagan priests and priestesses I discovered an article that presented an interesting idea: Saint Patrick was the man who drove the druids out of Ireland (or into submission in Ireland).  What is interesting about this idea is not the idea itself, as it makes perfect sense that in his efforts to spread Christianity Patrick would have made every attempt to suppress the pagans and their heathen practices.  What is interesting is that it has been reasoned that the myths of Saint Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland do not refer to reptiles, but the pagan religious leaders, as there is not real evidence that snakes ever lived on the island.  The association makes sense—snakes are often aligned with the devil and evil, and the easiest way to extend Christian control was to paint pagan religious leaders as villainous figures.  Early Christians would have understood the symbol of the snake in the same way we do today, and they would have turned against the druids.

This idea is new to me, and I can’t say whether this account is true or not as my research extends only as far as one article could take me.  What I can say is that it makes sense.   More importantly, it’s a good story, and that’s the real stuff of history.