The Color Green and a Guy Named Maewyn

A remarkable story of forgiveness, green hex code inspiration, and internet curations for your weekend reading pleasure.

Jenna O'Brien

and

Connor O’Brien

Mar 17, 2023

⁕ The wonderfully colorful, playful art of Michael McGregor, for your viewing pleasure

⁕ Read an interview with Lisa Yang, who has created a highly-stylized practice working as a creative director and prop stylist

⁕ An inside look at an Italian hotel’s colorful and bright space design

⁕ The power of fictional spaces: A non-existent country club that changed summer’s aesthetic

⁕ The seasonal refreshing Seafoam blend is a jasmine green tea from Color Theory Tea that will defrost your bones and get you ready for spring

⁕ This super cool perfume brand creates incredible-smelling laundry detergent too

⁕ This dazzling small floral shop in Naples, Florida curates wonderful giftable items and creates beautiful bouquet arrangements

⁕ Create backsplash tile arrangements with this renter-friendly custom alternative in delicious pastel shades

Meet Maewyn, He's Kinda Famous

(the story behind St. Patrick, a Briton, enslaved by the Irish)

From Connor O’Brien

This image is album artwork found on Bandcamp, and the absolute coolest Maewyn photo I could find.

Picture this: you’re an immigrant from Ireland living in another country and it’s St. Patrick’s Day. You’re waiting to finish your work so you can celebrate your heritage with the local Irish. What do you do? Go to your local bar of course and drink beer. Possibly a lot of beer. Yes, probably a lot of beer.

Now picture thousands of penniless children wandering around Ireland after their parents passed away from a great famine and you’d be looking at the harrowing beginning of my ancestry as far as my family and I can tell. This reality has hit Ireland several times and it’s all because of those temperamental potato crops. What’s unique about this specific picture is that there was a woman who ruled over the Southwest of Ireland and initiated a mass adoption of these children and, more than that, gave these children her name, O Briain (O’Brien).

My great, great, great grandfather came over from Ireland during the next, more prominent, Great Famine and fought in the American Civil War to gain citizenship here; he was the only surviving O’Brien in his battalion. So here I am finishing up work on St. Patrick’s Day so I can go over to a friend’s house and celebrate our heritage.

But wait. Who is Maewyn?

He’s the reason that you’re in danger of getting pinched today if you’re not wearing green. This 16-year-old boy got kidnapped from Britain back in the 4th century AD. Just because St. Patrick’s Day is widely observed across Ireland, the U.S., and other countries doesn’t mean that the celebrated figure is widely known. Heck, the guy wasn’t even Irish.

Maewyn, along with thousands of others, was taken from Britain by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. He was eventually sold to serve under the head of an Irish clan and take care of their sheep. So what exactly is being celebrated here? I'll explain.

Ireland, in the early medieval period, was divided into several small kingdoms often at war with each other but it was also a time of cultural and intellectual flourishing with the emergence of the so-called "Golden Age" of Irish art, literature, and scholarship. This period saw the creation of many important works of literature which would soon include the works of St. Patrick, or Maewyn, himself.

St. Patrick reflects on his time as a slave in Ireland in one of his few surviving written texts titled: Confession where he describes this time as a formative experience that deepened his spiritual faith and prepared him for his future mission to bring Christianity to the Irish people. He writes:

"I was then about sixteen years of age. I knew not the true God, and I went into captivity to Ireland with many thousands of people...and there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God...From there, after a few years, I came to know him, and I believed in him and confessed him to be my God."

He was Maewyn when he escaped to freedom from captivity, he became St. Patrick when he came back as a bishop of the Christian church. So, what is being celebrated today is not the fact that a British boy was enslaved by the Irish but it’s the fact that this enslaved boy came back to Ireland to spread a message of hope to his captors and the whole land.

It’s in St. Patrick’s second and final written work ‘A Letter to Coroticus’ that things become even more clear about what there is to celebrate about this man. Coroticus was a ruler in Britain with an army. Coroticus’ army had attacked some people with whom St. Patrick had shared his hopeful message and decided to write to his homeland and denounce these actions against the Irish converts. St. Patrick's letter describes Coroticus and his soldiers as "ravenous wolves" and "partners in bloodshed." The letter also excommunicates Coroticus and his followers, urging the Irish people not to have any dealings with them.

In the end, St. Patrick’s day is celebrated as a national holiday in the U.S. and other countries because of the Irish immigrants who have continued to celebrate their heritage with a nod to the bishop, the Saint - the man who spread a message of hope and salvation across the land of his captors. It’s a truly remarkable story of the redemptive capabilities of humanity and the will to overcome impossible hardships.