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Post by mentalguru on Mar 17, 2010 15:26:19 GMT -5
Went to the coast today myself, as to whether anything is happening tonight, I'm playing it by ear.
The guy who is thought to have driven snakes from Ireland (even though he obviously didn't, there were no snakes), a former slave (at 16, he was captured for slavery by Irish raiders, he was in Britain at the time) and he believed himself called to spread christianity to the very same country he escaped. He was a bishop when he returned to Ireland. He escaped (I THINK) at around his early 20s from slavery. (From what I remember anyway, from years of being told random facts at the same time every year but oddly didn't happen this time).
So anyone doing anything?
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Post by sgtyayap on Mar 17, 2010 15:34:15 GMT -5
Apparently it's controversial in regards to whether St. Patrick even existed! Anyway, I'm not doing much. One of my teachers gave our class mint-chocolate-chip cookies (with mint icing colored green), but, other than that, I don't think I'm doing anything. Not that I like what it's known for, anyway; the anti-snake messages just go too far.
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Post by mentalguru on Mar 17, 2010 15:45:19 GMT -5
Pfft. The most you get here is people wondering around with toy plastic snakes drapped around their necks here for the most part anyway. I DO remember at school though, our geography teachers would tell us why... that myth wasn't true as well as Religious Studies teachers adding the little 'foot note'. (Ice Age!). We didn't technically LEARN about that as a part of the national curriculum in any detail- they just told/explained that to people that near that day. I'm not sure if other schools did the same thing though.
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Post by mentalguru on Mar 17, 2010 16:08:47 GMT -5
I'll admit though, a part of me is curious as to whether they'll be St.Paddy Randall fanart stuff today, or heck Sulley stuff. Or both. Their surnames (last name) are from the island if you want to be technical about it (well bit of Scottish really for Randall and then MOVED to N. Ireland but you get what I mean, it's sort of amusing that Randall's surname is associated with my home country- heck my family were pretty much scottish folks who moved here if you move back far enough anyway.) Apparently in America, suddenly everyone becomes part Irish for the day. Is that true? The Boggs Family Coat of Arms: www.houseofnames.com/nameresults.asp?item=JPG-1001-300&sId=&surname=Boggs&origin=SCNo motto exists. The Sullivan Family Coat of Arms: www.houseofnames.com/nameresults.asp?item=JPG-1001-300&sId=5F529BC5-D456-4AD4-976C-8531DB1571AD&surname=Sullivan&origin=IRMotto: The steady hand to victory Sulley's looks... very cluttered and colourful compared to Randall's. Fun fact, 'Sullivan' is the most common name in the Province of 'Munster' in Ireland... was that intentional? I must admit, I just tend to pick names because I LIKE them then because they mean something/related to an area- regardless of whether I like/dislike the character. I was amused when I found Mary meant 'bitter'...and Nadine meant 'hope'. I'll try to see if I can find what the symbols MEAN perhaps too on the coat of arms if I can.
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Post by sgtyayap on Mar 17, 2010 16:19:21 GMT -5
Apparently in America, suddenly everyone becomes part Irish for the day. Is that true? At the very least, I haven't noticed in my area. By the way, you left out the detail about men exploiting the holiday for drinking. Sadly, The Simpsons episode "Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment" isn't that much a stretch from the truth, especially when it comes to the beginning of the episode.
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Post by pitbulllady on Mar 17, 2010 16:42:05 GMT -5
Just how(or IF) people here in the US actually celebrate St. Patrick's Day depends on where you live. It's a much, much bigger deal in the larger cities which originally had a significant Irish immigrant population, especially those who immigrated to the US during the late 1800's. Since the day itself fell(this year, anyway)during mid-week, the actual St. Patrick's celebrations are generally held the weekend before, since we here in the US, with the exception of New Orleans, tend to frown upon taking the day off from work just to participate in a large, outdoor drinking binge, which is basically what St. Patrick's Day is about in this country. Where I live, other than people wearing green, there's really not much going on, since the actual celebrations have already been held and the hangovers finally starting to wane.
There's been a lot of speculation on that whole "drove the snakes out of Ireland" thing. Ancient texts actually calls them "serpents", and as has been indicated to me by many experts on religious texts, including a Jewish Rabbi, "serpent" in this case is not necessarily synonymous with "snake". We know of course that Ireland never had any real snakes, and most folklorists believe that the whole "driving out serpents" was a metaphore for Christians "conquering" the native Celtic Druids, who often included a dragon-like image on many of their artifacts and ceremonial sacred sites. I've also used that whole M.I. Universe thing to raise that question as to whether those "serpents" might have been a relict population of sentient, sapient reptilian beings. On the DVD short, it was stated that the Mans drove the Mons out to sea in a boat, and the St. Patrick legend states that he "drove the serpents into the sea". Kinda interesting little coincidence, there, no?
Here in the US, the surname "Boggs" is largely associated with areas with large Scotch-Irish populations, especially in Appalachia, and the lower Midwest, places that tended to attract those independent souls. Irony(yeah, she's an interesting sister indeed)has it that you find many real, honest-to-goodness "hillbillies" with that last name in the hills of Tennessee, Georgia, West Virginia, Kentucky and of course, southern Indiana, that irony being that most uninformed movie fans thought that the people in the trailer were "hillbillies", when they clearly weren't. It's a common, working-class name, which would explain why the Boggs family crest(I'm honestly surprised there IS one, since those are usually associated with the "landed gentry")is rather simple compared to the Sullivan crest. The latter was a family with a lot more connections to the British Crown, not commoners.
pitbulllady
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Post by mentalguru on Mar 17, 2010 17:43:13 GMT -5
Very intersting pitbulllady! Especially how to relate it to Monsters Inc in some form. My OWN family COA is colourful like Sulley's but isn't nearly as cluttered (but we do have a motto), my surname is technically an occuptation though, and the motto is related to it on a certain level. But it's not a bad motto all the same since you can take it about life generally or metaphorically maybe. So I'm going on a limb here and thinking that my family's name is below Sulley's but more than Randall's in terms of connections to the upper class. Maybe. Hard to say. I'm not exactly sure what the symbols MEAN, though once again, it seems like mine is simpy related to the occupation. Where I was a Tour Guide, we knew the story behind the family crest THERE though- and it was quite interesting, apparently they claim to have earned it through hiding Malcolm from Macbeth when they still lived in Scotland and saving his life and their coat of arms represents that (or at least the half of the family before they went the double barralleled way). Or so they say anyway. I kind of WOULD like to know what they might mean (Boggs, Sullivan coat of arms if they mean anything), but I'm unsure of how to find out. Maybe at a later date.
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Post by pitbulllady on Mar 17, 2010 19:25:22 GMT -5
OK...did a bit of research into the symbolism on the Boggs COA,assuming it's authentic-again, this is NOT a family name associated with the upper class or gentry and it's possible that the commercial site displaying this COA had it designed by an artist to make a buck off of people with that last name who wanted a nice work of art to hang on the wall. Anyway, let's start with the colors. Red is the stand-out color here, and red, or "gules", represents a warrior and/or blood shed in battle for a noble cause, or a martyr. Black("sable")represents grief, mourning or constancy. Both white and silver("argent") represent peace and sincerity, at odds with the red. On the shield, there appears in the center a black chevron, which represents the roof of a house, indicating symbolism for both protection and a connection with a builder's guild. At the bottom of the shield appears a stag's(buck deer)head in gules, representing one who does not pick a fight, but WILL fight if cornered, pushed or provoked and who has shed the blood of another when forced to fight. The deer appears often in Celtic imagery and therefore also often appears on COA's from both Ireland and Scotland; my own family crest has two stag's heads, both gold, denoting royalty. On the Bogg's crest, there are two black stars at the top left and right of the shield, which denote excellence, virtue and righteousness. The head of armor above the shield symbolizes either wise defense of defense of wisdom(learning, education), depending on interpretation. Above the armor is a hourglass, which of course represents the passage of time and mortality, but the top contains more sand than the bottom, which indicates that the family plans to stick around for awhile, more or less. There is a possible connection between both the prominant black chevron and the stars with the Freemasons and the builder's guilds of Scotland. The double-star motif and the chevron motif appear frequently in the architechture of the mysterious Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, a 13th-century Scottish church which is reputedly linked to the last of the Knights Templar and later, the Freemasons, and is said by some to actually conceal the "Holy Grail" itself, so there is an intriguing connection there between these two groups and Clan Boggs, IF that COA is authentic, of course. I actually found a SECOND version of the family crest, which is the IRISH version, here: www.heraldry.ws/html/boggs.html . You can see it's quite different, and I do not know if both are authentic, or one is and one isn't, or both are modern artistic creations, or if one(probably the Scottish)gave rise to the other, since we do know that the family most likely did originate in Scotland and became assimilated into Ireland to the extent that it's as much Irish as it is Scottish. The chevron motif is still on the Irish version, as is the color red. The crescents represents the horns of a Celtic warrior/chief's helmet, indicating that the family was honored for its exploits in battle by the sovereign head of the country. Crescents can also indicate that the family represented itself with valour in the Crusades(again, there's that possible Templars connection). pitbulllady
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Post by mentalguru on Mar 18, 2010 7:51:35 GMT -5
Mmmmm. That is very interesting, but I agree it might just be an artist thing, still it seems to fit him on a certain level in some cases. I didn't know there was another version either.
My own family's shield as mentioned, well found out there are two versions- can't believe I missed that. There's also an ENGLISH version (but I'm... pretty sure my family are Scottish). The English version has 5 feathers coming from the helmet, the Scottish one a dog on top. (Not surprising the dog really, given the occupational name). Yes, we've a helmet too, seems a lot do. The Scottish one has three green horns, and is colourful, the english version is grey and black with an X shape. Scottish border of yellow and red- English, grey and red on the border. Only the Scottish one has a motto. Granted the name is generally on the BORDER of England and Scotland, I already knew that so a part of me feels silly for being surprised. My mother's name is technically either English or German. The English version has a motto related to intellect, which is cool, my dad's side in the Scottish version can be vaguely related to 'determination'.
The Knights Templer eh? That would be interesting to see!
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