EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.

And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle. 

We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.

St Patrick vs the goddess

Here’s a look at the relationship between St Patrick the ‘folk hero’ and the goddess figures he might have battled… 

(UCC, approx 10 mins reading time)

The older indigenous names for Croagh Patrick mountain may be lost, but it was named for the saint, “St Patrick’s Cone”, and became one of the largest Catholic pilgrimage sites. The mountain has many sacred associations and traditions that hint at its Pagan significance as a place connected with fertility, particularly the cairn near “St Patrick’s Bed” which at one time was visited by barren women; childless women would sleep here on the harvest festival, Lughnasagh Eve, in the hopes of becoming pregnant. Could this confrontation between the saint and a blackbird at the ancient sacred mountain be understood as the incoming patriarchal religion of Christianity superseding the native Paganism with its goddess-worship?

Read all the Evening Longreads here>