Many legends surround “the patron saint of Ireland”. For Saint Patrick’s Day 2014, I chose one of these legends and wrote a series of cryptic clues about it. See if you can figure out which legend I’m referring to before clicking on the boxes to reveal the legend and the explanation of the clues.
Which Saint Patrick legend is it?
The clues...
- If your brother has a penchant for chemistry and an eye for your wife, don't fall asleep in any orchards: act I, scene 5.
- Put down that dreydl and let's play Scrabble: AEEGHNN, EGHIMNNO, or AEGHIMNN.
- This legend doesn't snake around all of Ireland; it's confined to a more limited geographic location...or maybe two.
- We need the hunchback so we can hear about this spot.
- I guess Dante got it wrong.
- If this were Carlsbad, would Meat Loaf sing of bats emerging every night?
The clues refer to the legend of St. Patrick's finding purgatory in an Irish cave. (How much Irish whiskey St. Patrick consumed shortly before this "discovery" remains unknown.)
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If your brother has a penchant for chemistry and an eye for your wife, don't fall asleep in any orchards: act I, scene 5.
The first part of this clue directs you to Shakespeare's Hamlet. After falling asleep in an orchard, King Hamlet is poisoned to death by his brother who then takes King Hamlet's throne and wife. The ghost of King Hamlet is doomed to a purgatory-like state until he can convince his son, Prince Hamlet, to avenge the murder. Shakespeare makes reference to Saint Patrick's relationship to purgatory in act I, scene 5 of Hamlet. -
Put down that dreydl and let's play Scrabble: AEEGHNN, EGHIMNNO, or AEGHIMNN.
The spelling of dreydl tells you that the words in question are Hebrew. Descrambled, these words are:- AEEGHNN: Gehenna
- EGHIMNNO: Gehinnom
- AEGHIMNN: Gehinnam
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This legend doesn't snake around all of Ireland; it's confined to a more limited geographic location...or maybe two.
The first part of this clue tells you that the correct legend is not the one in which St. Patrick drove all of the snakes out of Ireland. The second part refers to the fact that some disputed the generally-accepted location of the purgatory cave on Station Island, opting for a spot on Saints Island. </p> -
We need the hunchback so we can hear about this spot.
The hunchback of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris had the job of ringing bells. A bell tower stands over St. Patrick's Purgatory. -
I guess Dante got it wrong.
In his Purgatorio, Dante set purgatory on a mountain in the Southern Hemisphere, not in a cave in Ireland. -
If this were Carlsbad, would Meat Loaf sing of bats emerging every night?
This clue is a reference to caves and hell. In New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park, visitors can observe bats flying out for dinner every night. In 1977, rock star Meat Loaf released his second album, Bat Out of Hell. (Not purgatory, but close enough.)