THE SHAMROCK 



The seventeenth of March always brings to mind a 

 pretty custom and an ancient legend. Caleb 

 Threlkald, in his Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum 

 (1727), writing of the Shamrock, says: "This 

 plant is worn by the people in their hats upon the 

 17th day of March yearly, which is called St 

 Patrick's day," and the custom, a very old one, is 

 still observed by Irish people throughout the land, 

 for the Shamrock is their national emblem as well 

 as the emblem of their faith. The oft-repeated 

 incident of its use by St Patrick to illustrate the 

 doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the most popularly 

 known episode of his life, and yet it is purely 

 traditional, for evidence on the point there is none. 

 To St Patrick may well be applied the words of a 

 celebrated divine, who, preaching on a saint's day, 

 exhorted his hearers to " consider first we know 

 little or nothing of this saint," while many of the 

 statements which have been made concerning him 

 are chiefly conjectural, and some of them contra- 

 dictory. According to certain historians, he was 

 born at the end of the third century near Glaston- 

 bury in Somersetshire ; by others he is asserted to 

 have been born in Scotland in a village at the 

 mouth of the Clyde, while a third legend makes 



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