“Three in one, one in three”— The Trinity… so signifies the green shamrock worn proudly by “the part of me that’s Irish” this blessed St. Patrick’s Day.

We have anticipated happily its coming. “By St. Patrick’s Day” we said with some longing when the fall hushed the crickets’ tunings and turned the cattle down the summer – path to continued stabling And in mind we pictured the break of the spring tide along the farmlands. We could fancy then [sic] as we looked off over the silent fields, the burst of music we should hear. No funeral march then, but an elfin movement, a light melody full of the blythe [sic] laughter of the tricking streamlets that ever at Alderlea, steal down from the rise of slope above us bearing off Winter to the millstream and river below. St Patrick’s Day invariably brings us, as now, those among opening bars, the eager happy prelude to the Spring Song we enjoy.

Its coming too, brings us choice glimpses of that Emerald Isle we think we have come to know better of late, since the lady of the manse at the corner, born and reared there as was her husband the minster of the “Old Kirk” has told us something of its rare beauty and charm…

Some day, who knows? We may come there to visit with James, to see that countryside where Irish folk declare “A bit of Heaven lies,” with its gold green sod, its misty mountains, its “lakes and fells.”

And he will see first the ponies, the cattle and pigs (“Isn’t that a handsomeone, Ellen.” he will say) and the sheep. And it will come to mind that maybe the forbears of those were of a flock the boy Patrick tended so carefully, when as a slave of the marauding King Niall, and only the age of Jamie, he was brought a captive to Erin’s shores. Born, historians are nat [sic] sure where— maybe in Britain or France they say— when the centuries were young, he was destined to become one of the greatest of missionaries. 

Called in a dream later to return from other lands to which the years had taken hime, to, Ireland, he heeded the voice that had begged him to “come and walk with us a before.

So great was his gift and zeal, it is said he made converts wherever he went, and before he died the whole Island was won to Christianity. He taught the doctrine if the Trinity by plucking a shamrock an pointing to the three perfect lobes growing from the one stem.

Rosa Mulholland, whose pen must have been dipped in Irish magic, so characteristically sweet sad the verses are, wrote: I wear a shamrock in my heart Three in one, one in three— Truth and love and faith, Tears and pain and death, O sweet the shamrock is to me!

Lay me in my hollow bed, Grow the shamrocks over me. Three in one, one in three Faith and hope and charity, Peace and rest and silence be With me where you lay my head: O, dear the shamrocks are to me”

– Ellen’s Diary, March 17th 2021

Source: Islandnewspapers.ca