The Name Patrick

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 12, 23 March 1905, Page 1

The Name Patrick

Artenfus Ward tells of a newspaper editor down in Virginia City that forgot his own nanue. The coming of St. Patrick's day lias reminded us that Irish people out of their own land too frequently display a somewhat similar lapse of memory at the baptismal font. The New York ' Freeman ' has an editorial paragraph in point which, w,e greatly fear, is equally applicable to Australia and New Zealand. 'Is the name Patrick,' .says our gifted American contemporary, ' borne by countless descendants of the ancient race 7 In Ireland, yes , but descendants seems to imply abroad, and to the question thus qualified we say no. We once heard a man say that he never knew a Patrick born in America, and it was doubtless true. It is, of course, true that there are Patricks who were born in America, but they are so scarce and scattered that it is quite possible for the ordinary man never to have met one. We put St. Patrick's- name upon our churches, but not upan our sonsi. The reason everyone knows. The great fighting Celt has a weakness down his spine, and although he stood up with his uike or his bare fist before the Sassenach artillery, he quailed before Sassenach jeers and laughter. Rome of the first immigrants who were heirs of the Gaelic chilisation never felt the necessity of attuning their lives or their family names to the ear of the Sassenach, and confened the name upon their children, but not so the later ones, who came under the influence of the great fall. Many who got the name at Baptism ceased to use it when they became old enough to be affected by the denationalising wave. We have heard mothers say they would not dare to put the name Patrick upon their children and send them to an American school. Let us face the facts, no matter how unpleasant, or- we shall never remedy them.'