Snakes

Snakes are largely an imagined contrast in the book rather than animals encountered directly. During a nighttime flea infestation, a passing cyclist invokes the familiar story that St. Patrick drove snakes out of Ireland, then jokingly blames the English for bringing fleas. The tale makes snakes part of the children’s world of folklore and national grievance, while the book’s other encounters with animals show how readily the children attach feeling and spiritual meaning to them.

Snakes in the Flea Story

After the family is badly troubled by fleas, a man on a bicycle stops to offer advice about the mattress. He expands the practical encounter into a comic history: Ireland, he claims, once had no fleas, and the English introduced them to torment the Irish. He sets this against the story of St. Patrick driving snakes out of Ireland, imagining a peaceful landscape where people could walk without either snakes or fleas disturbing them.

Folklore and National Irony

The passerby’s account is presented as his humorous explanation, not as verified history. Its joke depends on reversing the moral roles of two creatures: snakes are described as harmless unless cornered, while fleas are persistent nuisances. By pairing St. Patrick’s celebrated expulsion of snakes with the English supposed introduction of fleas, the story folds Ireland’s political grievance into an everyday complaint about pests.

Animals, Souls, and Care

Elsewhere, animals matter through the children’s responses to vulnerability and loss. After Oliver’s burial, Frank throws a rock at a jackdaw near the grave and refuses to leave his brother among the birds; his father warns that jackdaws might be someone’s soul. Michael likewise insists that a stray greyhound he cared for was Catholic, and grieves when it dies. These moments do not develop the snake story, but they show the wider pattern in which animals become bound to mourning, compassion, and religious imagination.

Narrative Significance

Snakes have no direct plot action in the cited episodes. Their significance lies in the stories people tell about them: the flea-infested family’s visitor uses them to construct a comic contrast between Ireland’s legendary past and its present discomfort. Set beside the children’s more immediate attachments to birds and dogs, the anecdote also shows how animals can serve very different roles in the book—folkloric symbols in one scene, objects of care and grief in another.