St. Patrick myth-busting, from snakes to pagan nipples | CNN

For many around the world, St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of green beer, fiddle music, and the best holiday after Halloween for wearing a silly hat and throwing up in the street. For me, though, as a child growing up in the Northern Irish town of Downpatrick, the saint’s traditional burial place, it was a pious affair of Mass in the morning, wearing an Aran-knit jumper and a wilting badge of shamrock, then a day off school. So who then was the real St. Patrick, whose legacy contains such multitudes? In the 1,600 years since this Christian missionary and bishop made his mark in Ireland, the cult and mythology surrounding him has overtaken the man himself. To mark St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, here are a few surprising things you might not know about him. Patrick was born into a Christian family in Britain in the late fourth century, when the Roman Empire was in decline and had become vulnerable to raids from beyond its borders. His comfortable life as a deacon’s son was disrupted at the age of 16 when he was captured and enslaved by Irish raiders, spending the next six years as a shepherd on a remote, often freezing hillside. Remarkably for the fifth century, he left tw