O'Leary the Leering Leprechaun

By now, we all have seen,

That little eejit on the shelf,

The naughty, spying git,

The smug Christmas Elf.

We forget he’s sitting there,

He stares all day without a flinch,

Then, when all are fast asleep,

Comes alive to play the Grinch.

He flies to Santa the tattletale

With all the good and bad we’ve done,

Then, plays the downright hypocrite,

He spends the night in mischievous fun.

Well, if you think the Elf is creepy,

Have I got some news for you!

Let me introduce his cousin,

Leering Leprechaun O’Leary.

One bright St. Patrick’s Day

O’Leary came up with something new:

He thought long and hard upon his life,

How things had gone askew.

He and all his merry kin,

Once wee angels in the sky,

But swayed by Lucifer’s horrid sin,

From Heaven were forced to fly.

Not yet so bad to be sent to Hell,

But not good enough to stay On High,

Down to earth they were flung,

Banished from their angelic home

Soaring in the sky.

Now they wander Eire

Waiting for the end,

For when the Trumpets blow,

The Pit will receive them then.

Before their time will come, they figured,

“Why always be so glum?

While we trot about this earth,

We’ll have our share of fun.”

So, for eons they danced and played,

Enjoyed their gold, revelled and fought,

Drank and partied millenniums away,

Heaven? Nary a thought!

Then the light for a moment dawned

In Little O’Leary’s brain.

“Sakes! What’s the point of this,

If we can’t see Heaven again?

Hell is not the place to be,

I can see that clearly.”

So, the wheels began to turn,

In the crafty mind of O’Leary.

He noted his jingly cousin

That little eejit Elf,

Was on to something good,

By sitting, staring on the shelf.

“If me daft cousin can be a snoop

And spy for someone saintly,

Sure, I can do the same,

It might work, just maybe!”

It didn’t take him long at all

To think who he could aid,

Why, St. Patrick could use a hand,

And then, he’d have it made!

That saint had earned a special grace,

A blessed gift from above:

That he could greet the Irish,

The people that he loved.

He would get to judge them first,

Then, send their souls to God.

What?  How could so great a task

Be done by just one saintly man?

O’Leary could help keep track,

Of those Paddies in every land!

Spying on all the Gaels and Celts,

Now that’s a master plan!

He could easy creep them out,

With all his leery looks,

Freaking them into being good,

Or mark them in his books.

So many Paddies make a hames

Of St. Paddy’s special day,

O’Leary thought he’d make sure,

They’d spend it the right way.

A smithereen o’green,

Did ye forget to wear?

Ah, look out me friend,

Cead mille pinches beware!

Did ye go to Holy Mass,

Did ye say all ye’re prayers?

Or like ing-uns are ye’re sins and faults

Piled up in multi-layers?

Did ye go and take the time

To unload them in confession?

Or are ye just wasting time,

With all ye’re larkin’ and ye’re messin’?

Did ye think to thank the saint?

Nay! Ye’re  a gluttin’ on corned beef!

Ah, more’s the pity,

Ah, more’s the grief!

A drinking ye love to do,

The stout and whisky flows,

The Pledge is gone, the bottle remains,

Oh yes, O’Leary knows.

The list goes on and on,

What keeps us from the pearly gates,

O’Leary marks it down,

He and all his tiny mates,

For now every leprechaun,

Has latched to his bright idea,

If they help him out they figure,

They too will have no Hell to fear!

We know not what St. Patrick thinks,

O’Leary lacked the stout to ask him,

The leprechauns thought they’d save them up,

And all the records hand him.

How successful will they be?

‘Tis difficult to tell,

For they are all as cheeky,

As the family Christmas Elves.

At night they resume their auld ways,

It’s hard to stay so good!

Drinking, fighting and hoarding gold,

Divilment is in the blood.

But by day if they are caught,

You may see what they have done,

Poking in all your cupboards,

Or making sure your work’s undone.

Ah, ye little hypocrites,

To spy on us so sorely!

Then to find ye’re just as weak,

Ye’re virtues are sure poorly!

So beware, all ye who boast,

Irish ancestry in ye’re blood,

O’Leary and all his puckish mates

Know when ye’re up to no good.

 

Other St. Patrick Day Blog posts you may like:


When St. Patrick Impaled a Convert 

St. Patrick's Purgatory 

 The Shamrock Purist

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February 13th ~ Hell's Birthday?

Two years ago, I came across an interesting piece of Medieval trivia ~ that scholars once believed God created Hell on February 13^th.

(Image: Painting depicting Hell, c. 1516) 

 

 This was news to me.  The bafflement was mighty!  After studying the Faustian legend  and writing about it in-depth to the point of severe academic obsession, starting with the historical Faust in the late Medieval Period who allegedly sold his soul to the devil and working my way up to Goethe’s epic closet drama published in the 19^th century,  I wondered how come I never heard about this before?

Naturally, I had to do so digging and satisfy my curiosity, and lately have decided this might make an interesting blog post.

I began my information treasure hunt with Google, (where else?), and discovered a post dated February 13, 2014 on a Benedictine website stating that this hellish event was marked in medieval calendars.  Considering we are looking into the Medieval Period, we must not forget that in those days theological scholars believed they had also pinpointed the First Day of Creation according to their Biblical calculations based on the Julian calendar, which is currently 13 days behind ours. (So, 'Hell Day' would be the 26th of February in our modern calculation of time assuming my online source hasn't already adjusted the date.)

My theory is, if you can understand how they calculated the First Day, it should be fairly simple to see where ‘Hell Day’ originated.  Right?

Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with too much history. (Hopefully!)

We already know that the early and Medieval Christians believed the First Day began on March 25, the day Julius Caesar set forth as New Year’s Day on the calendar he instituted, yes, the Julian Calendar.  He chose that day as it was the Spring Equinox, however, as his calendar was not astronomically accurate, the equinox shifted over the centuries.  

 In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII instituted a new way of reckoning the year to correct the astronomical discrepancies they crept in, changing New Year’s Day to January 1.  We continue to use the Gregorian calendar to this day, which as mentioned, has skipped forward almost two weeks due to the Julian discrepancies.

 However, it is the Julian Calendar that still is of interest to us, and indeed, is still used by Orthodox Christians.  Despite the shift in the spring equinox, March 25^th continued to be regarded as the First Day of Creation in both the east and west during the Medieval period:  it seemed logical that Creation had to have taken place sometime within the life-giving season of springtime. The day was also mystically significant as it was the Feast of the Annunciation, the day of Christ’s conception.

Our information digging doesn’t stop there; the majority of the earliest Christians up until the Middle Ages believed that Creation began circa 5500 BC give or take a few years.  Yes, there were various calculations proposed, but for some time, this was the basic accounting of years according to calculations of the Septuagint.

Okay, enough of calendar history! 

According to the Medieval way of thinking, we have March 25 as the Day of Creation and also the year c. 5500 BC as the Anno Mundi to work with.  Some theologians believed that Hell had to have been created for the evil angels that fell before God turned to work on the rest of Creation, although there is Biblical evidence God had already created the physical earth already before Satan fell.  However, for those scholars who believed Hell was created first, it is logical to assume they thought Hell must have been created around or slightly before this date in March and about the same year ~ so that would be from February to March.

Curiously, we find that in Dante’s time it was  believed the First Day of Creation took place when the sun was in the constellation Aries, a belief he recorded in his poetic classic ‘The Divine Comedy’ (1308-1320):

“The hour was morning’s prime, and on his way

Aloft the sun ascended with those stars (Aries)

That with him rose when Love Divine first moved

Those fair works: (...)”

          ~ Canto I, The Divine Comedy, (Harvard Classics, Vol. 20)

 

(Image: Dante holding a copy of The Divine Comedy next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, with the spheres of Heaven above.  Fresco by Michelino, 1465)

Thanks to modern astronomy technology, we can now test out this information with some stellar experimentation!

Looking at the sky with the Stellarium app, we find that around 5500 BC the sun was indeed in Aries, right in sync with Dante’s fine verses.

Using this year, we can also see why theologians and scholars thought Hell was created in February.

Not only is the sun in Aries in 5500 BC, it is above the constellation Cetus ~ right over the head of the evil sea monster of Greek mythology that was destroyed by Perseus.  Remember the movie Clash of the Titans? 

 (Image: 12 PM screenshot of the sun Cetus, 5500 BC, from the Stellarium App.   Assuming the date February 13^th is according to the Julian calendar, I’ve set the date in the App to the 26^th, taking into account that we are now 13 days ahead in the Gregorian Calendar.)

 

Now, get this...

Cetus is also called the ‘Whale’ ~ a beast that was considered a symbol of Hell.

How did they come up with that?

In the Gospel of Matthew 12: 38-40 we find the following:

“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying: Master we would see a sign from thee. Who answering said to them: An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet.  For as Jonas was in the whale' s belly three days and three nights: so shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” (Bible: Douay-Rheims edition.)

Using the symbol of Jonah and the whale, Christ was foretelling His death, his following decent to the Underworld and His resurrection that would happen three days later. 

In those days it was taught that both the Limbo of the just souls and the Inferno of the damned were part of ‘Hell’. 

 Christ descended to free the just souls, and it is also believed He entered Hell, commanding Satan and all the demons to bow before Him and acknowledge Him as the Lord God ~ the 'Harrowing of Hell'.  Of interest, when St. Jerome translated this passage of the Sacred Vulgate, he used the word ‘cetus’, the same word as the whale constellation.

(Image: the constellation Cetus as a fish-tailed monster published in 'Urania's Mirror', 1825)

I also found a Biblical Astronomy site online edited by Robert Scot Wadsworth that states the name Mira for the bright star in Cetus is from the ancient Hebrew ‘marah’ meaning ‘rebel’, ‘rebellious’, ‘disobedient’ ~ a fitting star to be found in the constellation representing Hell where Satan the rebel angel and all his followers are doomed to remain for all eternity.

In ancient texts it is common to see the gates of Hell depicted as a monster or whale swallowing up the damned.  You can find some incredible examples in the following  post published in the British Library Medieval Manuscripts blog: “Prepare to Meet You Doom”.  Oh heck, I'm borrowing one of their images... here it is:

 (Image: detail of demons throwing sinner in to the mouth of hell from the 'Taymouth Hours', Yates Thompson MS 13, f. 142 r.)

Detail of a bas-de-page scene showing the casting of souls into Hell, from the ‘Taymouth Hours’, - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/02/prepare-to-meet-your-doom.html#sthash.4K2slu3g.dpuf

Detail of a bas-de-page scene showing the casting of souls into Hell, from the ‘Taymouth Hours’, Yates Thompson MS 13, f. 142r. - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/02/prepare-to-meet-your-doom.html#sthash.4K2slu3g.dpuf

There we have it!  So, if we use the theory that Hell was created for the devil and his angels before God turned His attentions to creating the physical cosmos, (although there is evidence in the Bible the devil actually fell to earth as well), and if we take 5500 BC and observe the sun’s position in Cetus in February, we can see how the scholars of those times arrived at their calculation, February being before March, the month some theologians believed God began his Great Work of Creation.  Even when adjusting the 5500 BC assumed date of Creation back and forth a decade or two, the sun is still in Cetus, the Mouth of Hell.  How they arrived at the date, the 13^th, I’m not sure: that’s another mystery to unravel, which I shall leave to the experts in biblical astronomy.


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St. Patrick's Purgatory

(Post originally published March 16, 2013)

St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was famed for his strict fasts and his practise of extreme bodily mortification, not only for the conversion of Ireland but also to atone for his own sins.

Why was fasting and penance so important to him? According to Catholic teaching, if you do not make reparation for your sins, even if you are saved, you must still make satisfaction for them in the next life in Purgatory where your sins are ‘purged’ from your soul before you may enter Eternal bliss. Saints and mystics who had been granted visions of the dreaded place of cleansing described the various torments endured there, each torture depending on the nature of the sins committed. One poor soul who had been granted permission to come back and tell of his sufferings said the pains were so bad that minutes felt like hours if not whole days. Also, there were many poor souls there with years, even centuries, left to serve on their sentences in that woeful prison. In all, the soul warned it was far better to do penance on earth than see what may await you in Purgatory.

Returning to St. Patrick, Station Island situated on Lough Derg, County Donegal became famed for his teaching on the subject. According to one story, he gave a sermon on Hell and Purgatory to the locals, but they remained sceptical about the existence of these places saying they would not be so doubtful if one of them could be permitted to descend, see what was there, and return to tell the tale. The saint was so upset by this lack of faith he wondered how he could convince the Irish and prayed to God for assistance. Christ appeared and showed the entrance to a cave on the island which led to Purgatory and Hell. A man was sent down to see these strange abodes, and according to the story, returned to describe what he had seen. In other stories, St. Patrick ordered a pit to be dug into which the man descended. Medieval accounts describe the ‘pit’ as a shaft that was a low and narrow kiln. Ever since, the island has sometimes been referred to as ‘St. Patrick’s Purgatory’.

Illustration of Station Island by Thomas Carve, (1666). 'Caverna Purgatory' marks the site of the cave.

Was it just a legend? There is in a fact a cave on the island, which has been closed to the public since October 25, 1632. Some authorities claim it received the name ‘purgatory’ from the Latin medical term of ‘purgatorium’, a room to purge the body of all ailments and impurities, further pointing out that the ancient druids would often use caves to smoke medicinal herbs to cleanse the body through sweating similar to modern saunas. In addition, historians note that the ‘purgatorial’ nature of the cave was not attached to St. Patrick and the Christian doctrine of Purgatory until much later in medieval documents. Despite these observations, the old texts are still fascinating. They tell of other brave souls who wished to follow in that first adventurer’s footsteps and see the gloomy realms of the Christian underworld for themselves. By the time the monastery was built on the island, the brave pilgrims had to seek the permission of its founder, St. Dabheog, who was one of St. Patrick’s disciples, before they could venture into the pit, or a series of nine ‘pits’, after which they were lowered into the final dreaded shaft.

Picture of the chapel, bell tower, and 'penential pits' or 'beds of the saints'on Station Island. The cave lies under the bell tower.

What did the penitents endure?

Here legend becomes blurred. One story relates that St. Patrick was attacked by demons in the shape of black crows for forty days on the island as a penance, and that those who came to the island were assaulted by the same bird-like demons. If they survived, they had accomplished their purgatory. The text by the famed medieval chronicler of Ireland, Giraldus Cambrensis, relates a different description. According Giraldus, the island was occupied by the monks on one side and a hoard of demons on the other that continued to cause an uproar and disrupt the monks’ peace with their pagan festivities. By then, the pilgrimage had developed a set ritual. Before they were permitted on the island, the pilgrims had to seek permission of the local bishop whose duty it was to dissuade them from undertaking this perilous journey. First they would be reminded of the horrific torments they would endure, then learn about the fate of those penitents who had never been seen again. Tales abounded of those reprobates who were not worthy of salvation and were dragged body and soul to hell instead. If the pilgrims persisted in performing the penance, they were conducted to the shaft with all due ceremony and lowered down by means of a rope with nothing but a loaf of bread and a vessel of water to sustain them in their fight against the evil demons. The pilgrims spent a night in each of the nine ‘pits’ and were tormented in a thousand different ways by devils for those nine nights before being lowered into the cave. At the end of each night, if the pilgrim survived, he was taken to the church in a joyous procession bearing the cross and chanting psalms. If a pilgrim was not to be found, the sacristan simply closed the doors to the church, that soul was lost for all time.

In some texts there is evidence the ritual of the pilgrimage had changed in the later Medieval period, that the penitents were allowed only one drink a day from the sacred lake, but were not expected to go into the nine ‘pits’. Instead, they took part in procession and prayed at the ‘stations’, or ‘penitential beds of the saints’ for nine days. On the ninth day they listened to sermons telling them of the danger they were about to undergo by venturing into the cave, and if they still wished to undertake the penance of staying a full day and night in the kiln, they forgave their enemies and said farewell to each other before they were lowered into the cave in case they might never be seen again.

The various legends state that several people returned to bear witness of the terrible sights they had seen of Purgatory and sometimes Hell. The place was so terrifying they could laugh no more and could no longer take part in anything mirthful on earth. The reputation of the island became so great during the Middle Ages that it was a continual point of reference for preachers when people doubted the existence of Purgatory. Many flocked there to perform penance, and perhaps, to see what awaited them in the next world. A ‘Knight Owen’ supposedly made a descent in 1153 and came back to tell of his experiences. In 1358 Edward III gave a Hungarian nobleman letters patent attesting that he had indeed ‘undergone his purgatory’.

Believe it or not, the island is still a popular place of penance and is often booked out. For three days pilgrims ‘undertake their purgatory’ by going barefoot and saying prayers, walking around to the famous ‘prayer stations’ or ‘beds of the saints’ in all weather be it rain or shine. On the first day, a twenty-four hour prayer vigil is commenced, only on the second day are they allowed to sleep. Until then, each pilgrim must watch out for their neighbours and prod them awake if they happen to nod off. Mass is also celebrated, and of course, penitents participate in the sacrament of confession. Furthermore, a strict fast of one meal a day is observed and consists of dry toast, oatcakes and black weak tea or coffee. If this is too unbearable, I have heard that the staff will provide a bowl of broth, but don’t expect it to be fancy! The penitential soup is so watery that the poor pilgrim is wondering what was boiled in it, if indeed, anything made it into the pot at all besides a dash of salt and pepper. Lough Derg is considered the toughest Christian pilgrimage sites in all of Europe if not the world, and not recommended for anyone under the age of fifteen or who has health issues. At least the ordeal now lasts only three days instead of nine!

Interested in booking a pilgrimage? Visit: http://www.loughderg.org

For those who are curious about Purgatory, this is one of my favourite books on the subject:

Purgatory: Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints

(Commentary for this blog post about the medieval legends of St. Patrick’s Purgatory taken from: ‘The Poetry of the Celtic Races’ by Ernest Renan (1823-1892), The Harvard Classics, Vol. 32, pp. 177-178.)

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