Hah! I wish I'd know that when, on this very day, my friend (a Coolican) was ragging me because the Inmans came from Yorkshire.
Dale, Dale, Dale ...
If you're going to whine about the dispensation, we don't have to put the corned beef on the table for you ... can I condider having to eat your share a Lenten pennance?
"... and, in the frozen wastes of Ypsilanti, they were forced to eat corned beef ... yeah ..."
peace,
I'm half Irish and almost half Welsh, so I can claim St. Patrick in either way.
Well said, Dale.
When St. Patrick's day falls on a Friday in Lent, I vow to wear green only when the Irish fast.
I believe his priest-grandfather was Italian, so I can claim him too. 
And you probably mean ENGLISH, no? "British" would include all citizens of the realm, the Irish included.
Actually, at the time of St. Patrick, the term "England" would have been anachronistic -- the Angles (and Saxons and Jutes) were still in northern Germany. "Britain" is perfectly acceptable, as a Roman term and primarily a geographic one (while "England" is primarily a political term, and one had that little salience in the 5th century, when the relevant divisions were Wessex, Northumbria, etc.)
And are you aware, O Mr. Taffy Price, that the site you link to says quite clearly that St. Patrick was born in Scotland? And less than 15 miles from where I was born, no less?
Rich:
Victor's essentially right, with one caveat below. England is based on "Angle", one of the Germanic tribes that swarmed over the eastern coast of Britain from the mid-fifth century onward. Angle-Land, basically. The French actually preserves it quite well--"Angleterre" being the polite offical term. The Angles settled in what is now called East Anglia all the way north to Hadrian's Wall, and their first great kingdom was, indeed, Northumbria. The great historian and Saint Bede was a Northumbrian.
The term "England" is also somewhat ironic, given the fact that it was the Saxons who took the lead to unite what eventually became pre-Conquest England. Namely, King Alfred the Great (one of my heroes) of Wessex uniting the parts of England not conquered by the heathen Danes in the late 800s. His descendants took the offensive and eventually absorbed and Christianized the Danes during the 900s. You see where the Saxons settled in regional names like Wessex (West Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), Essex (East Saxons).
Where Victor the Kiltie goes slightly askew is that Scotland also didn't exist at the time of Patrick. The Scoti (an Irish tribe, interestingly enough) didn't invade Pictland until around the 7th Century.
So Patrick was a Roman Brit.
I regret I missed the somewhat popular sermon by a well-known Presbyterian minister here in Ft. Lauderdale explaining how St. Patrick was some sort of proto-Protestant.
Glad to see you back Dale.
An Irishman is sitting in a pub one night when three Englishmen walk in. The men sit down, and start to talk about how they can get a rise out of the Irishman... The first man says, "Watch this..." He gets up, walks over to the Irishman, and says, "Hey man, I hear your St. Patrick was a queer." The Irishman just replies, "Oh, is that so now?" The Englishman goes back to his seat perplexed when his friend jumps up and says, "Here, lemme try that." So he goes over to the Irishman and says, "Hey man, I hear your St. Patrick was a transvestite queer!" The Irishman only replies, "Oh, is that so now?" The Englishman, frustrated, goes and sits down with his friends. The third Englishman jumps up and says, "Well now, I gotta try that!" So he walks over to the Irishman and says, "Hey, I hear your St. Patrick was an ENGLISHMAN!" And the Irishman replies,
"Aye, that's what your friends were sayin."
So, St. Patrick was a transvestite queer?
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