Irish Folk Customs for St. Patrick's Day: Charred Sticks, Pota Pádraig, and the Farming Calendar
Most people picture St. Patrick's Day as green beer, parades, and plastic leprechauns. The pagan corner of the internet has its own version of this false image: a day of mourning for Druid genocide, observed in black. Neither of those has much to do with what Irish people historically have done on March 17th (if you want the full case against the "Druids as snakes" myth before reading this, start with the previous article).
Kevin Danaher writes in his book The Year in Ireland that compared to May Day or Christmas, St. Patrick's Day had "few and meagre" traditional customs. What existed was specific, local, and tied to the church calendar and the farming year. The Dúchas Schools' Collection, folklore recorded by Irish schoolchildren from community elders in 1937–39, confirm this.
The pota Pádraig (St. Patrick's Pot) is a term that goes back to at least 1689 and is the best-documented St. Patrick's Day custom in the Dúchas collection, and the most contested.
The ritual itself was simple: at the end of the day, you took the sprig of shamrock you'd worn all day, dropped it into your final glass of whiskey or punch, drank it down, then fished the shamrock out and threw it over your left shoulder.The Year in Ireland
The Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society in 1908 was at pains to point out that the custom didn't require getting drunk, the drinking was incidental to the toast.
One Dúchas entry captures the social side of it:
If an old man met another man, he asked him if he had his 'Patrick's Pot' yet. This meant had he a 'pint' yet that day. If he had not, both would have one then. duchas.ie
In practice, it seems the drinking rarely stopped at one pot.duchas.ie,duchas.ie By the time the Dúchas records were written, the custom had been officially suppressed. The government had closed the pubs on St. Patrick's Day, and many entries describe it in the past tense.
Danaher cites Fitzgerald and M'Gregor's History of Limerick, which records the holiday beginning "with numerous acts of devotion at a well dedicated to the saint" and ending "with copious libations to his memory."
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This is the custom most people have never heard of, although it has ten entries in the Dúchas collection, more documentation than you'd expect for something that gets almost no attention.
Danaher also mentions the practice briefly in his book:
In some parts of the south of Ireland, a cross was marked with a burnt stick on the sleeve of each member of the family, with a prayer that the person so marked might be steadfast in the faith of St Patrick. The Year in Ireland
While the type of wood that is used (sally/willow, furze, and hazel all appear in different accounts), who performs the ritual (usually the father), and which shoulder is marked change between accounts in the School's Collection, the ritual otherwise remains consistent.
One account from County Cork:
While I remember, and to this day my father brings in a bit of a sally stick every St. Patrick's morning, puts one end in the fire to blacken it, and with the burnt end makes a cross on the right sleeve of his coat and on the sleeve of each member of the family in honour of St. Patrick. duchas.ie
Another recalls their mother performing it:
When I was a school boy I remember my mother on St Patrick’s day, getting a sally or willow, put it into the fire until the end of it became ignited, then putting out the flame and making on the right shoulder of every member of the family the sign of the cross with the blackened or burned end of the stick. duchas.ie
While these entries describe it as an on-going or at least very recent practice, other entries say that it happened "long ago"duchas.ie or say that it is a "custom which is fast dying out"duchas.ie
Of all the customs in this article, I think this is the strongest candidate for revival by modern pagans interested in Irish tradition. It requires nothing expensive or hard to source and the gesture is tactile and specific.
Strip the explicitly Christian prayer if that's not your framework, keep the household protection intent, and you have a March 17th practice with real roots.
Danaher writes "St Patrick's day was generally taken as the middle day of Spring." The improved weather expected from then on was tied to a folk belief that Patrick had promised every day would be fine after his festival. For farmers, March 17th meant the potato planting deadline. Those who hadn't started by then "were regarded by their neighbors as slovenly and lazy."
St. Patrick's Day was also when farmers bought their seed. One Dúchas record describes:
It was a great day for the publican and seed merchant. It was a custom for the farmers to buy all the seed they needed on St Patrick's Day. duchas.ie
One Irish-language Dúchas entry connects the feast to the sowing more concretely: a spark from St. Patrick's fire at Cnoc Sláine (the Hill of Slane) was placed in a bag of oats to bless the spring planting.duchas.ie The narrator notes the people had no reason for it except belief — "sin é an chreid a bhí acú." A piece of practical folk magic attached to the feast day.
The three customs above get the most space in the Dúchas entries. The rest of what the collection has recorded clusters around a few themes that are worth touching on briefly.
The shamrock is in virtually every entry, worn by everyone. The reason given is consistent — Patrick used it to explain the Trinity, "as there are three leaves on one stem, there are Three Persons in One God" — but nobody could agree on which plant it actually was. Caleb Threlkeld identified it as white clover in 1727. Nathaniel Colgan's later survey, in which he asked people across Ireland to send him living specimens, produced four completely different plants. Several people refused to accept that any of Colgan's specimens could be the real thing. The belief that shamrock won't grow outside Ireland appears in multiple entries as plain fact.
The cross predated the shamrock as the main St. Patrick's Day emblem. Thomas Dinely, writing in 1681, noted that "the Irish of all stations and conditions wore crosses" while only "the vulgar superstitiously wear shamroges." By the 1890s, detailed accounts describe two entirely different crosses: boys wore paper circles divided into colored compartments, colored with egg yolk and chewed grass and blood from a pricked finger; girls wore ribbon-wrapped cardboard pinned to the shoulder. Crosses were worn until Lady Day (March 25th) then burned. By 1908 only girls and small children still wore them in Dublin and Kildare. By Danaher's writing they were gone entirely, replaced by shop-bought harps and badges. Several Dúchas narrators note the ending with some sadness.
Sending shamrock to those abroad appears in entries from across the country, mentioned without commentary as something families simply did. A week or ten days before the feast, boxes went in the post to relatives in America, England, Australia. Danaher notes that crosses made from priests' old vestments were also sent abroad, "where they were doubtless received as welcome souvenirs of an ancient custom in the land of their fathers."
What the School's Collection recorded in 1937–39 was a holiday already in the middle of becoming something else. The handmade crosses were gone, replaced by shop-bought harps and badges. The pota Pádraig was officially suppressed. The Free State and the Gaelic Revival were turning the feast into a national ceremony.
The holiday most people recognize now was built on top of something quieter, more local, and considerably stranger. A feast tied to the farming year, the church calendar, charred sticks, and shamrock in the post.
