St Pattys Day
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95 free St Pattys Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
50 free St Pattys Day trivia questions with answers. St Pattys Day trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is St. Patrick's Day trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01On what date is St. Patrick's Day traditionally celebrated each year?
March 17
March 17: the feast entered the Catholic Church's universal calendar in the early 1600s, and Irish communities abroad had kept the date as a national day since the ninth century.
Q 02Which country is credited as the origin of St. Patrick's Day as a religious feast day?
Ireland
Ireland: the Irish church kept 17 March as Patrick's feast from around the ninth or tenth century, long before the day became a secular celebration abroad.
Q 03St Patrick's Day always falls inside which Christian season of fasting?
Lent
Lent: Ash Wednesday is never later than 10 March and Easter never earlier than 22 March, so 17 March always lands inside the fast, and the feast day's dispensation let people eat and drink.
Q 04According to legend, what creatures did St. Patrick famously banish from Ireland?
Snakes
Snakes: Ireland never had any, as the Roman writer Solinus noted in the third century; the earliest text crediting Patrick with banishing them dates only from the late twelfth century.
Q 05What color was originally associated with St. Patrick before green became popular?
Blue
Blue: the Anglo-Irish Order of St Patrick, founded in 1783, took sky blue as its colour, while the United Irishmen adopted green in the 1790s and green won out.
Q 06Which U.S. city staged the first recorded St. Patrick's Day parade, back in 1601?
St. Augustine
St. Augustine: the 1601 parade in Spanish Florida, organised by the colony's Irish vicar Ricardo Artur, predates Boston's 1737 celebration and New York's first parade by more than a century.
Q 07Which little bearded man of Irish folklore hides his gold at the end of a rainbow?
Leprechaun
Leprechaun: the solitary shoemaker fairy of Irish folklore is said to keep a crock of gold at the rainbow's end and to grant three wishes to anyone who catches him.
Q 08What dish, often served with cabbage, is popular on St. Patrick's Day in the United States?
Corned Beef
Corned beef: it is not a traditional Irish dish, since beef was long too dear in Ireland and bacon was the everyday meat; Irish-Americans paired cheap corned beef with cabbage.
Q 09The Irish word 'seamróg', from which 'shamrock' derives, literally means what?
Young clover
Young clover is all it means, yet Elizabethan English writers thought the Irish ate it, possibly confusing seamróg with seamsóg, the word for wood sorrel.
Q 10Which major US city has dyed its river green for St. Patrick's Day since 1962?
Chicago
Chicago got the idea from sewer workers, who were using green dye to trace discharges into the river in 1962 and realised it could turn the whole thing green for the holiday.
Q 11Besides Ireland, on which Caribbean island is St. Patrick's Day a public holiday?
Montserrat
Montserrat: settled by Irish Catholics in the 1600s, the island keeps 17 March as a public holiday that also commemorates a failed slave uprising against its Irish planters.
Q 12In Irish traditional music, the violin is almost always called by what name?
Fiddle
Fiddle: the instrument is physically the same as a classical violin, but Irish traditional players call it a fiddle and favour dance rhythms, rolls and cuts over sustained vibrato.
Q 13Patrick's own account of his life, one of his two surviving writings, has what Latin title?
Confessio
Confessio: written in plain Latin late in his life, it defends his Irish mission against critics back in Britain and tells of his escape by ship after a voice told him it was ready.
Q 21What traditional Irish ring shows two hands holding a crowned heart?
Claddagh Ring
The Claddagh ring is a traditional Irish ring where two hands clasp a heart, often topped with a crown, representing love, loyalty, and friendship.
Q 22Which NHL team was known as the St. Patricks and wore green jerseys from 1919 to 1927?
Toronto Maple Leafs
Toronto Maple Leafs: the club played in green as the Toronto St. Patricks from 1919 until Conn Smythe's group bought it in 1927 and renamed it the Maple Leafs.
Q 23Which New York National Guard regiment traditionally leads the city's St Patrick's Day parade?
69th Infantry Regiment
Q 14What does the traditional Irish phrase 'Erin go Bragh' mean?
Ireland forever
Ireland forever: it anglicises the Irish 'Éirinn go Brách', literally 'Ireland until the end of time', a slogan of Irish nationalism since the late 1700s.
Q 15St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in March because it is believed to be the anniversary of what event?
His death
March 17th is observed as St. Patrick's Day because it is the traditional anniversary of his death.
Q 16Legend says St. Patrick used the three leaves of a shamrock to explain which Christian doctrine to the Irish?
The Holy Trinity
The Holy Trinity story is first written down in 1726, yet coins minted in the 1680s already show Patrick clutching a shamrock.
Q 17New York City's St Patrick's Day parade traces its history to a first observance held in which year?
1762
1762: the first observance was a gathering at the home of John Marshall, an Irish Protestant; a parade by Irish soldiers serving in the British Army followed in 1766.
Q 18What is the capital city of the Republic of Ireland?
Dublin
Dublin is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Ireland, a popular destination for St. Patrick's Day festivities.
Q 19Guinness, the drink most tied to St. Patrick's Day, is which style of beer?
Stout
Stout: Guinness, the dry stout brewed at Dublin's St James's Gate since 1759, is the beer most associated with the holiday, and brewers plan months ahead for the spike in demand.
Q 20In Irish traditional music, a jig is written in which time signature?
6/8
6/8: the standard double jig runs in 6/8, two groups of three quavers to the bar, while the rarer slip jig stretches to 9/8.
69th Infantry Regiment: the 'Fighting 69th', a New York National Guard unit raised among the city's Irish in 1849, has marched at the head of the Fifth Avenue parade since 1851.
Q 24What is the Irish name for St. Patrick's Day?
Lá Fhéile Pádraig
Lá Fhéile Pádraig translates literally as 'the Day of the Festival of Patrick', which is why the holiday is also called the Feast of Saint Patrick.
Q 25Approximately when did St. Patrick die?
Mid-400s AD
The annals disagree, recording a "repose of Patrick" in 461 or 462 and another death in 492 or 493; tradition settled on 461 and holds that he was buried at Downpatrick.
Q 26Irish soda bread rises because bicarbonate of soda reacts with the acid in which ingredient?
Buttermilk
Buttermilk: its lactic acid reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to release carbon dioxide at once, so bakers mix briefly and never knead; soft Irish wheat flour suits the loaf.
Q 27Which landmark was among the first two lit green for Tourism Ireland's 'Global Greening' in 2010?
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House: it and Auckland's Sky Tower were the first two landmarks lit for Tourism Ireland's Global Greening in 2010, a campaign that later spread to hundreds of sites worldwide.
Q 28Which stiff-bodied, fast-footed style of Irish dance went global after a 1994 Eurovision interval act?
Stepdance
Stepdance: Riverdance, the seven-minute interval act at the 1994 Eurovision in Dublin, showed the rigid upper body and rapid footwork of Irish stepdance to an estimated 300 million viewers.
Q 29Which Irish writer produced the best-known version of 'The Wearing of the Green' in 1864?
Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault: he rewrote the anonymous 1798 street ballad for his 1864 play Arrah-na-Pogue, producing the version that begins 'O Paddy dear, and did ye hear'.
Q 30Whom does the orange stripe of the Irish flag stand for?
Symbolizes the Protestant population
Green stands for the Catholic tradition, orange for the Protestant one, and the white between them for the hoped-for peace between the two.