The Shamrock and all It Symbolizes in Ireland

2021 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: America ireland

A three leaf clover, also known as a shamrock, is an Irish symbol that was used by Saint Patrick to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity. Saint Patrick was a missionary and bishop in Ireland during the 5th century. Saint Patrick died on March 17th. This day is celebrated for his remembrance through the well-known holiday called St. Patrick’s Day. Shamrock is a name that refers to the Irish word “clover,” which many people mistake for the four leaf clover. The use and belief of the shamrock goes back to the land of the Druids. The Irish have many traditions and beliefs that they follow in their normative society. Geert Hofstede, a physiologist known for developing the five cultural dimensions, categorized Ireland as a high individualistic, low power distance, and high masculinity culture.
The shamrock has been an Irish symbol since the eighteenth century and has become a national symbol due to its association with Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick, also known as the “Patron of Ireland,” was born in Scotland in the year 387. At a young age, he was taken from a raiding party and became a slave to Ireland for six years. During those six years, he was responsible for herding sheep in the land of Druids. Saint Patrick “learned the language and practices of the people who held him” (Catholic). He prayed every day to God for a helping hand through this rough time and God revealed to him how to escape though a dream.
After his captivity, Saint Patrick studied to become a priest under the guidance of Saint Germanus. Saint Germanus, the bishop of Auxerre, helped Saint Patrick prepare for priesthood for many years. When he was ordained bishop, he practiced his teachings in Ireland, where he converted many people to Christianity. “Patrick was a ...

... middle of paper ...

.... .

Samovar, Larry A. “Chapter 5/ Alternative Views of Reality: Cultural Values.” Communication
Between Cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 1991. N. pag. Print.
"St Patrick's Day Celebrations - Irish Traditions & Customs." St Patrick's Day Celebrations-
Irish Traditions & Customs. N.p., 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2014. .
"St. Patrick - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online." St. Patrick - Saints & Angels - Catholic
Online. N.p., 2013. Web. 19 Apr. 2014. .
"The Four Leaf Clover." The Four Leaf Clover. N.p., 2007. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
.
"THE HOFSTEDE CENTRE." Ireland. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
hofstede.com/ireland.html

Show More
Related

  • Review of How the Irish Saved Civilization

    471 Words  | 1 Pages

    St. Patrick, as he would be called, after revelation from God, escapes from slavery and returns to his home in Britain for a short time. On return to Ireland, St. Patrick dedicates the remainder of his life to spreading Christianity through the land. He transformed original Celtic warrior values into new Christian ones. Not only did St. Patrick love the Irish people, but the Irish people loved St. Patrick. Cahill notes: "as the Roman lands went from peace to chaos, the land of Ireland was rushing even more rapidly from chaos to peace" (124). The Irish, then, in their new fervor for Christianity, began setting up centers of spiritual learning. It is here in these monasteries, we learn, that monks and scribes of Ireland begin their preservation of any and every bit of literature and knowledge that they come into contact with.

    Read More

  • Book Review Of Paddy's Lament By Thomas Gallagher

    831 Words  | 2 Pages

    Paddy’s Lament is about the terrible sufferings of the Irish people during the potato famine and of the cruel treatment that the Irish went through at the hands of the British people. The British did nothing to help the Irish survive when if they just shared their food they could have saved millions of people from a horrible death. They wrote in their newspapers that the Irish were lazy and didn’t want to work. At the time before the famine, the Irish loved their homeland and few wanted to immigrate to other countries. They had little money to buy a passage to America. They would send one member of the family to America and he would get a job to help those back home. As the famine got worse, the English were looking bad to the rest of the world and decided on a plan to ship all the Irish they could to America and Canada. This way they would rid themselves of the Irish problem. The British paid passage to families who would immigrate. The Irish were happy to leave, but the conditions on the British ships were deplorable. They had to stay on deck through the whole voyage, and about one in three people died. So many Irish people died that they became known as coffin ships. When they arrived in New York, the Irish were examined by a health examiner. Some families were separated from others, and children were separated from their mothers. The Irish were taken to tenements to live in. The conditions of the tenements were horrible. There were so many people living in them that the places we...

    Read More

  • Angelas Ashes

    681 Words  | 2 Pages

    Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. Due to the Great Depression, Malachy could not find work in America. However, things did not get any better back in Ireland for Malachy. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting cliches about drunken Irish manhood are based. Week after week, Angela would be home expecting her husband to come home with money to eat, but Malachy always spent his wages on pints at local pubs. Frank’s father would come home late at night and make his sons get out of bed and sing patriotic songs about Ireland by Roddy McCorley and Kevin Barry, who were hung for their country. Frank loved his father and got an empty feeling in his heart when he knew his father was out of work again. Frank described his father as the Holy Trinity because there is three people in him, “The one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland” (McCourt 210). Even when there was a war going on and English agents were recruiting Irishmen to work in their munitions factories, Malachy could not keep a job when he traveled to England.

    Read More

  • Essay On Irish During The Gilded Age

    3124 Words  | 7 Pages

    Meagher, Timothy. “The Columbia Guide to Irish American History.” Columbia University Press- New York, 2005

    Read More

  • Irish Republican Army

    652 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Irish Republican Army started after they were recognized by Irish Nationalists when they were Irish Volunteers from starting the Easter Rising. Their main purpose of creating w...

    Read More

  • The Irish Trinity Symbol

    616 Words  | 2 Pages

    The iconic Irish trinity symbol a.k.a. the trinity or Celtic knot has been a revered symbol in Ireland for centuries. The trinity represents the Power of Three or triquetra (try-KET-ra). The Power of Three is an immutable law that when three entities combine powers, they increase their power far greater than three times.

    Read More

  • St. Boniface

    1467 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his youth, St. Boniface encountered many priests or clerics who traveled from town to town. Through these spiritual conversations, it became evident to St. Boniface that he wanted to pursue a life with God. Eventually, after continuos begging and his fathers fatal sickness, he was sent to the care of the Monastery of Examchester. (Appleton) It is here, that St. Boniface expressed to the Abbot at the time, that he wanted to live a monastic life. The father of the monastery, after council, granted him his wish. Here is where the saint began to prove his love for God, and could begin his journey of the Christian life. After exceeding all expectations and surpassing the knowledge of his teachers, he moved to a neighboring monastery, called Nursling, whereby he studied under the influence of Abbot Winbert.(St. Boniface Church) Here he gained vast knowledge of scriptures and the spiritual exposition of the Bible. Here, he gained such a reputation that men and women from far and wide traveled to study scriptures under his guidance. At the age of 30 he was humbly ordained a priest and yet another branch of his life was fulfilled.

    Read More

  • How My Irish Heritage Has Affected My Life

    1026 Words  | 3 Pages

    To start with, Irish people are known for their sense of humor, their hardworking, loyal, love tall tales, and especially the love of their family. There are also many stereotypical characteristics that we are given such as: all Irish people are drunks (now I can not totally argue with that because most Irish people do enjoy their alcohol), we all have red hair, that the way we speak is so beautiful and poetic when in all reality it is like “where the bloody hell are you?” There are many more stereotypical characteristics we are

    Read More

  • Ireland: The Invention of Tradition

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    In order to legitimise a regime or cause, traditions may be constructed around historical or mythological events, people or symbols that reinforce the image required to focus people’s conception of the past. People can be encouraged to invent a cohesive view of their shared ‘traditions’ by what could be called cherry picking bits of history.

    Read More

  • St. Catherine of Siena

    2003 Words  | 5 Pages

    Blessed Raymond of Capua. The Life of Saint Catherine of Siena . Trans. George Lamb. New York: P.J. Kennedy and Sons, 1960.

    Read More

  • Irish Immigration In America

    1783 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...trong faith and the strong sense of humor helped my relatives, and all of the other Irish to prosper. The current 38,760,000 Irish Americans owe their ancestors a great deal of thanks for sustaining and perpetuating the long-standing tradition of the Irish in America. Bibliography

    Read More

  • The Reformation and the Church

    1602 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 21, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org

    Read More

  • St Patrick Research Paper

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    Where he began his religious studies and was eventually ordained. He finally received the education he had once awfully regretted while enslaved. Shortly after ordination he was sent Ireland on a dual mission, to “do what no Catholic bishop had ever done before. He would go out among the heathen barbarians outside the Empire to convert them to Catholic Christianity” (Thompson 80). Saint Patrick spent his next thirty years in Ireland performing missionary work.

    Read More

  • Blarney Stone Research Paper

    394 Words  | 1 Pages

    When most people think about St. Patrick’s Day they envision leprechauns, shamrocks, bagpipers and beer – lots and lots of green beer! While all of those things have become synonymous with America’s favorite green holiday, there is also a lot of heavily rooted tradition behind the Irish holiday. In Boynton Beach, we celebrate the holiday with our annual Blarney Bash event by paying homage to the legendary Blarney Stone.

    Read More

  • The Gaelic Athletic Association

    1654 Words  | 4 Pages

    After the Great Potato Famine in the country of Ireland, the culture and pride of the land began to disappear. The Irish had lost around one million people after this tragedy struck the land, and the Irish morale was low. People began to emigrate to other countries and British customs and language were beginning to take over. It became evident that the Irish needed a cultural revolution to restore all that had been lost in their culture. The solution to this problem was found in the creation the Gaelic Athletic Association. While its main focus may have only appeared to involve sports, it was very influential in the cultural and political revolutions to come in the future. The GAA has been described as a sum bigger than its parts because of the fact that it involved so many more aspects of Irish life than just sports (Fair). The revival was seen by most people as an effective way to enter the modern world as an Irish nation instead being associated with Britain. Ireland was at a crucial part in its history and the GAA played a major role in politics and in restoring the Irish pride that makes Ireland so famous today. It is generally viewed that the GAA had the biggest impact on Irish society during this very unstable time period because it "spread the country like prairie fire." (Gaelic Athletic Association).

    Read More

More about The Shamrock and all It Symbolizes in Ireland

Open Document