Irish Symbolism: Green vs. Blue

Every year around this time you see lists of things that everyone supposedly gets wrong about St. Patrick's Day. Many of them are correct, for example the tradition of corned beef and cabbage is an American invention. But one just seemed off the first time I heard it. This was the supposed "fact" that the color of St. Patrick was blue, not green. According to the Wikipedia article on "St. Patrick's Blue", English King Henry VIII was the first English king to declare himself "King of Ireland". He had an official flag designed that featured a gold harp on a blue field. The color blue in this case was not specifically associated with St. Patrick.

The color blue's actual association with St. Patrick only dates back to the 1780's and the Anglo-Irish  and Protestant 'Order of St. Patrick'. Yes, Anglo-Irish, the descendants of those who the English had settled in Ireland in order to keep the locals in line. In fact, the order had considered orange as their official color, but decided that the sectarian associations with the color would be too obvious. (Read up on William of Orange and the Orange Order). There is some debate among historians about whether St. Patrick even had an official color and if so, what it was, but there is a large consensus that "St. Patrick's Blue" was an "invention of tradition" to bolster the choices of the tenuously Irish 'Order of St. Patrick'.

Native Irish societies, such as 'Irish Catholic Confederation' and 'The Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick' founded in  the 1680's and 1750 respectively, used green as their official color, partially as a counter to the English use of blue as an identifying hue. During the 1790's Irish nationalists adopted green as their color as well. The phrase "wearin' of the green" comes from a song from that era referring to Irish nationalists being persecuted for wearing green. As time went by the color green became more and more associated with Ireland and by extension, St. Patrick's Day, a day when Irish heritage was celebrated. When the mass emigrations to the United States took place in the mid 1800's to early 1900's green was firmly in place as the color symbolizing Irish independence, Irish culture and especially independence from England. It's doubtful that many Irish thought about whether green was specifically associated with St. Patrick, but knew that it was intimately associated with a free Ireland.

Wear the green...forget that blue nonsense.