Dew-covered shamrocks (Oxalis acetosella)
17 March 2021
Shamrock is an Anglicization of the Irish seamróg, which means little/young clover (seamar). The name is applied to a variety of species of clover, i.e., the genus Trifolium, as well as to other three-leaved plants, such as the wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella).
The shamrock’s role as a symbol of Ireland stems from the legend of St. Patrick using the plant to explicate the doctrine of the Christian Trinity. The truth of the legend—as well as nearly every detail of Patrick’s life—is dubious. The legend about the shamrock isn’t recorded until the eighteenth century.
The word shamrock is first recorded in English by Edmund Campion in his c. 1571 history of Ireland. The work is a piece of colonial propaganda, portraying the Irish as savages:
Their infants of the meaner sort, are neither swadled, nor lapped in Linnen, but foulded up starke naked into a Blankett till they can goe, and then if they get a piece of rugge to cover them, they are well sped. Linnen shirts the rich doe weare for wantonnes and bravery, with wide hanging sleeves playted, thirtie yards are little enough for one of them. They have now left their Saffron, and learne to wash their shirts, foure or five times in a yeare. Proud they are of long crisped glibbes, and doe nourish the same with all their cunning: to crop the front thereof they take it for a notable peece of villany. Shamrotes, Water-cresses, Rootes, and other hearbes they feede upon: Oatemale and Butter they cramme together. They drinke Whey, Milke, and Beefe broth, Flesh they devoure without bread, corne such as they have they keepe for their horses.
This passage needs some decoding for the present-day reader. The belief that the Irish ate shamrocks is probably based on either starvation dietary practices or the fact that some tri-foliate plants (e.g., the wood sorrel) can be eaten. The reference to saffron is to the Irish practice, starting in the tenth century, of dyeing clothing with saffron to produce a distinctive yellow color. Since saffron was rare and expensive, such clothing was viewed as a status symbol. The English began to pass sumptuary laws to forbid the wearing of saffron—laws meant to keep the Irish in a lower social status—in the mid fifteenth century, and outlawed saffron-dyed clothing entirely in 1537. The word glib refers to hairstyle. A glib is the forelock when it is worn long, over the forehead and eyes. The law, 28 Henry 8 c. 15, passed by the Irish parliament in 1537 reads
Wherefore be it enacted, ordeyned and established by authoritie of this present Parliament, That no person ne persons, the kings subiects, within this land being, or hereafter to be, from and after the first day of May, which shall be in the yeare of our Lord God, a thousand fiue hundred thirtie nine, shall be sworne, or shauen aboue the eares, or use the wearing of haire upon their heads, like unto long lockes, called Glibbes, or haue or use any haire growing on their upper lippes, called or named a Crommeal, or use or weare any shirt, smocke, kerchor, bendell, neckerchove, mocket, or linnen cappe, coloured, or dyed with Saffron.
Getting back to the three-leafed plant, the spelling shamrock appears a few years after Campion’s history in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, in a passage cribbed in part from that earlier work:
Water cresses, which they terme shamrocks, rootes and other herbes they féede vpon, otemeale and butter they cramme together, they drinke whey, mylke, and biefe brothe. Fleshe they deuour without bread, and that halfe raw: the rest boyleth in their stomackes with Aqua vitæ, which they swill in after such a surfet by quartes & pottels.
Sources:
Campion, Edmund. “Campions Historie of Ireland” (c. 1571) Two Histories of Ireland. Dublin: Society of Stationers, 1633, 17–18. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Flavin, Susan. Consumption and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland. Irish Historical Monograph Series 13. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2014, 120. JSTOR.
Holinshed, Raphael. “A Treatise Contayning a Playne and Perfect Description of Irelande.” The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande. London: John Hunne, 1577. 28. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s. v. shamrock, n.
The Statutes of Ireland, Beginning the Third Yere of K. Edward the Second, and Continuing Until the End of the Parliament, Begunne in the Eleventh Yeare of the Reign of Our Most Gracious Soveraigne Lord King James. Dublin: Society of Stationers, 1621, 129–30. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Photo credit: Erik Fitzpatrick, 2009. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.