There are many crazy stories about St. Patrick, some of which make him sound suspiciously like Moses. Like Moses, he had a faith-off with the priests of an inferior religion, who, like the Egyptian priests, were able to do a few neat tricks courtesy of their gods. The story is that an Irish druid, in an attempt to impress his followers into rejecting the Word, called out to his gods and rose into the air. Patrick prayed, and the druid fell to his death. This of course sounds just like the story in which the Egyptian priests turn their staves into snakes and ask Moses if his fancy god can do anything that cool, whereupon Moses's staff turns into a snake that eats the Egyptian snakes. The parallel between the two stories makes me wonder if this is where the connection between St. Patrick and snakes comes from.
When his iconography does include snakes, I like that he's generally shown pointing to them. Presumably he is banishing them, but it looks as if he's saying, "Dude, seriously, am I the only one who sees this?"
Possibly my favorite story about St. Patrick is that he saved so many souls that he got all kinds of crazy bonuses and powerups from God. He'd always been able to scatter miracles like table salt, but near the end of his life he also got some nifty extra presents for the Irish, including the promise that seven years before the Judgment Ireland will be covered with water so the Irish will all drown and be spared the reign of the Antichrist. And on Judgment Day itself St. Patrick will personally judge all the Irish souls! Does the judging of any other ethnicities also get farmed out to their patron saints, or is Patrick just that special?
