POETIC LICENCE
Friday 17 March, and Irishness is upon us once more: St Patrick’s Day. Isn’t St Patrick the one who is supposed to have banished all the snakes from Ireland? This for ‘attacking him’ as he prayed on a mountain top. Nice story, as many myths are, but wholly untrue. Apart from there being no scientific evidence that there were ever snakes in Ireland for him to banish, the notion that snakes are out there looking for people to attack is nonsense.
I’ve been re-reading DH Lawrence’s superb poem ‘Snake’ this week and thinking about how lucky we are to share our land and lives with such magnificent animals. Lawrence wrote his poem in 1923, when he was living in Sicily. It tells of how
A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
Unfortunately, there isn’t space to quote the whole poem here (although I do recommend you find and read it) but Lawrence describes how, having watched and waited as the snake drank from the trough, and having admired its golden beauty,
The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous. And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
Despite the fear of snakes instilled in him by “the voice of my education”, he cannot help but admire it:
But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? […] Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured.
As the snake quietly completes his drinking and prepares to return to the hole in the stone wall from which he had emerged, the watcher panics, picks up a log and throws it, causing the snake to ‘convulse’ back into hiding. The irrational fear of snakes that so many people have appears to have triumphed.
And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. And I thought of the albatross And I wished he would come back, my snake. For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again. And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness.
And so it is for me. I’m all for according the proper respect to every living creature – including snakes – but I sometimes wonder whether we don’t deny ourselves access to genuine riches when we believe alarming tales about the natural world fed to us by our “accursed human education”. So as you sup your green ale today in celebration of all things Irish, take a moment to consider whether St Patrick truly did his neighbours a favour by banishing these most wonderful reptiles from the world.