With St Patrick's Day approaching, people are getting ready to be Irish for one day. Wearing green makes you invisible to the leprechauns, it is said. And if a leprechaun spots you not wearing green, you'll get pinched. (My mum comes from an Irish family that loved to help the tiny, bearded fairies. She was an epic pincher.) But of all the traditions and lore associated with St Patrick's Day, one has always stood out: the story of how St Patrick drove all of Ireland's snakes into the sea. According to the legend, the religious man known as St Patrick travelled from England to Ireland to do missionary work in the fifth century. While he was there, he was attacked by a group of snakes. Serpents are a symbol of the devil in the Christian Bible, so St Patrick cleansed the Emerald Isle of "evil" by shooing every legless reptile he could find into the ocean.