A man is a dog's best friend, and my best friend is Rainer.

St. Patrick, the "Apostle of Ireland", was born about 383 A.D. at Dumbarton, Scotland to a prosperous Celtic-Roman family (his father was a deacon and magistrate) who had migrated to Britain. His childhood name was Succat (meaning "warlike") McCalpurn. At that time Britain was part of the Christian Roman Empire and so Succat was baptized and given the Latin name Patricius (meaning "noble").

When he was sixteen, St. Patrick was captured by Irish marauders who took him to Ireland where he was sold to a chieftain in Dalaradia. St. Patrick spent the next six years as a shepherd before escaping to Gaul where he received formal education in monasteries. This led to his ordination as a bishop.

St. Patrick then returned to Ireland as a missionary, where he spent the next forty years preaching, teaching, and baptizing while building churches, schools, and monasteries.

St. Patrick is believed to have died at Saul on March 17, 493 A.D. [* see ref. below]

"The shamrock, a symbol of Irish and Celtic national consciousness, can in fact be any of a number of (generally three-leafed) plants, including wood sorrel and various clovers. By pre-Christian times Druids revered the shamrock as a sacred symbolic plant; it later came to symbolize the Christian Trinity. It thus became an attribute of St. Patrick, who is often represented killing a snake with a cruciform staff topped by a shamrock.

The four-leafed clover is thought of today as lucky, which is explained superficially by reference to its rarity: one must be lucky to find one, therefore the clover itself is seen as bringing luck. The original symbolism probably goes back to the robust growth of the plant, which made it a symbol of vitality in general.

In medieval love poetry, couples often met or made love "in clover"; today, perhaps because of the importance of clover for pasturage, to be "in clover" means to live well, to be free of care, and to be prosperous.

Because clover, presumably as a reference to new life after resurrection, was at one time planted on graves, it also came to symbolize parting, often in combination with Roses (the symbol of love) and Violets (whose color is that of penance) ...

Christian symbolism finds green 'equidistant from the blue of heaven and the red of hell ... an intermediate and mediating color, soothing, refreshing, human, a color of contemplation, of the expectation of resurrection' [Heinz-Mohr]. Christ's Cross, as a symbol of the hope of salvation, was often portrayed as green, the Grail Emerald green ...

'The Emerald Isle' is Ireland, and green the color symbolizing the struggle for Irish independence from Great Britain." [** see ref. below]

* "The Book of Saints", compiled by the Benedictine monks of St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate, London: A & C Black Publishers, 1989, page 433; and "A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints" by The Rt. Rev. F. G. Holweck, St. Louis & London: B. Herder Book Co., 1924, republished Detroit: Gale Research Company, Book Company, 1969, page 776.

** "Dictionary of Symbolism", by Hans Biedermann, translated by James Hulbert, New York & Oxford: Facts on File, 1989/1992, pages 72 & 158.

Keywords: St. Patrick's Day, St. Patrick, Saint, saint, Patrick, patrick, Padraig, padraig, Shamrock, shamrock, Clover, clover, Irish, irish, Celtic, celtic, Ireland, Chihuahua, chihuahua, Rainer Bronner.