Information from the Saint Piran’s Trust – [more]

Saint Piran is the patron saint of tin-miners. He is also generally regarded as the national saint of Cornwall. Saint Piran’s Flag is a white cross on a black background which is commonly used as the Flag of Cornwall.

St Piran’s Day is March 5th. No one can state for sure who Saint Piran was, we can only sift for clues in documents written after his death. In the past, many writers have stated with confidence the facts of his ancestry but it is far from clear.

The Saint Piran Trust believe St Piran was born in Ireland and raised on the island of Cape Clear off County Cork. After studying scriptures in Rome he returned to Ireland and was made a bishop at his monastic settlement Saighir Kieran. There is no reference to his death and there is no shrine to his honour yet he is one of the twelve most revered saints in the Irish Roman Catholic calendar.

Many people have claimed many things but nothing is sure, we can only ponder on who Saint Piran was, where he came from, and how he arrived in Cornwall. One thing is sure. Saint Piran lives on in the hearts and minds of the Cornish people here in Cornwall and around the world.

According to legend:

“The heathen Irish tied him to a mill-stone, rolled it over the edge of a cliff into a stormy sea, which immediately became calm, and the saint floated safely over the water to land upon the sandy beach of Perranzabuloe in Cornwall, where his first converts to Christianity were animals”.