What's behind the legend of St. Patrick banishing snakes from Ireland. Photo by: Getty

Did St. Patrick Ireland's patron saint really banish all the snakes?



It’s the season where folks celebrate St. Patrick, the man best known for banishing snakes from the green fields of Ireland.

Yes, once upon a time, snakes were slithering and sliding around the Irish countryside, but their disappearance had absolutely nothing to do with any divine intervention.

Legend has it that St. Paddy stood on a hilltop, dressed in his formal green attire, and waved his staff to herd all the slithering creatures into the sea, expelling them from the Emerald Isle forever. And low and behold, there hasn’t been a snake seen in Ireland since 461 AD (expect for the odd household pet and zoo creature).

Snakes, according to the Smithsonian website, are just lizards with no feet. When snakes first evolved – about 100 million years ago – Ireland was still submerged under water, so migrating to Ireland wasn’t an option for the serpents.

However, when the ocean finally did drop and Ireland surfaced, it was attached to mainland Europe, therefore allowing the slithery creatures, to make their way onto the land.

Just three million years ago the ice age arrived, turning all snakes into popsicles. And since then, the climate has changed more than 20 times, often blanketing Ireland with ice. Because snakes are cold-blooded animals, they can’t survive in areas where the ground is frozen, so they all had an icy ending.

According to scientists, the last time Ireland was covered in ice was 15,000 years ago. After this time a snake would have comfortably survived in Ireland. However, Ireland had by then separated itself from mainland Europe, causing a 12-mile water gap – the North Channel – between Ireland and neighboring Scotland. The channel became a barrier that no terrestrial snake could cross. So the upshot of the story is, there are no slimy slithering serpents roaming the Irish countryside today because they have simply no way of getting there.
