naught Palace of Cruachan, under the tuition of the two Druids, Mal and Coplait.'

On top of the mountain of Croagh Patrick in Connaught, he spent the forty days of Lent, watching, and fasting, and praying. And the tradition goes, as recorded by the Monk Jocelin that it was from this mountaintop he commanded all the serpents and venomous things in Ireland, driving them into the ocean, and ridding Ireland of all viperous things forever."

The Saint at length reached the Wood of Focluit dear to his memory-reached it at the time of a great assemblage of people and there preaching to those children of Focluit Wood, whose cries he had heard in his dream, he converted, it is told, the seven sons of the chieftain, Prince Amalgaid, and twelve thousand people.

In 441 after seven years in Connaught, he proceeded by the narrow way between Benbulbin and the sea, into Ulster, where he spent four years travelling, preaching, baptising and church-building.

After that he preached through Leinster-on the way to which, the Dubliners, it is said, came out in crowds to meet him. And then on through Munster. At royal Cashel in Munster, he converted the king, Aongus."

He had to measure his power with these Druids, as with the Druids at Tara. To prevent his finding the palace of Cruachan, they, by their Druidic art, brought down upon the plain, for many miles around, a thick darkness which enveloped Patrick, his companions, the castle and all within the plain of Magh Air-a darkness which held that region for the space of three days and three nights. Then Patrick, in the name of Christ, blessed the plain, so that the Druids alone remained in darkness, while the blessed light was restored to all others there. Finally Mal and Coplait were convinced and converted-along with their charge, the beautiful princesses.

8 Some centuries before, Solinus, the Roman writer, recorded that there were no snakes in Ireland-which belies the honoured tradition. The tradition, however, persists, and will always persist in the popular belief. There is a second legend in some parts of Ireland which says that one serpent, either through a fortunate slothfulness or some other cause, was not cast out with the others. Patrick, being later informed of this, induced the dilatory fellow to go down into the deep waters of Loch Neagh, on the promise, more ingenious than ingenuous, that he should be released therefrom "on the morrow." Since that time children living in the neighbourhood of Loch Neagh can hear the prisoned fellow raising his head above the waters, at the dawning of each new day, to inquire, "Is this day the morrow? Is this day the morrow?" But alas for him-for him, and for all unfortunates who wait for the morrow which never comes!

When about to baptise the king, Patrick thrust his pastoral staff, by its sharp iron point, into the earth-as he thought. But it was through the foot of Aongus he thrust it. He discovered his grave mistake only when the ceremony was finished. "Why did you not tell me this?" he cried to the king. And Aongus answered simply. "Because I thought it part of the ceremony."

Twelve sons and twelve daughters of the heroic Aongus were consecrated to God. Aongus ordered that henceforth a capitation tax from his people should be paid to St. Patrick and to his successors in Armagh. It was paid every third year, by the kings of Munster, down to the time of Cormac MacCullanan in the tenth century.

Patrick convened a Synod at Cashel, where he met his southern rivals, Saints Ailbe, Declan, Ciaran and Ibar, and after much argument got their obedience. Ibar was the most obstinate and last to yield. For he was unwilling, says an account, that any one but a native of Ireland should be acknowledged the ecclesiastical patron of the country.

After completing his work in Munster the Saint returned north again through Leinster into Ulster, where he was to spend six years more, visiting the churches, organising congregations and ordaining priests.

He then founded Armagh-where was to be his See 10-built his church, his monastery, and school. He made it the primatial city of the island. But, through the work and the fame of the great schools which were to develop there, it was to become, within a few centuries-to quote words of a great Continental scholar (Darmesteter)-"not only the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland but the capital of civilisation."

His favourite disciple, Benignus (Benin), the herdboy, he put into his See of Armagh, to administer it for him, while he spent these years of his old age for the most part in tranquillity, sometimes in Armagh and sometimes in his first church of Saball.

In all likelihood it was during these tranquil years, when now his hardest work was over, that Patrick directed the compilation of the laws, known as the Senchus Mor. He got the law-givers to

10 The Hill of Armagh on which he founded his Archiepiscopal city was given him by Daire, the chief of that district. Tradition says that Patrick saved the life of Daire; and as a token of his thanks, Daire sent to Patrick, by messenger, a brazen cauldron. When the messenger returned, the chieftain, desiring to have pictured to him the overwhelming gratitude which he had anticipated Patrick would display, asked what Patrick had said. And the messenger replied that the good man had said, "Gratias agam." "Gratchacam!" exclaimed Daire, "that's a poor reward for a good cauldron. Go take it from him again!" When the messenger returned with the cauldron, Daire once more asked what Patrick had said when the cauldron was taken. The messenger answered that he had said, "Deo gratias!" "Gratchacam again!" exclaimed Daire. "Gratchacam is the first word with him, and gratchacam the last. Gratchacam when giving it to him, and gratchacam when taking it away. The word must be good!" With his wife he then went to Patrick, and bestowed on him not only the cauldron but also the Hill of Armagh, for the building of his primatial city. Says the Four Masters, under the year 457: "Ard Macha was founded by St. Patrick, it having been granted to him by Dari, son of Finneadh, son of Eogan, son of Niallan. Twelve men were appointed by him for building the town. He ordered them in the first place to build an archbishop's city there, and a church for monks, for nuns, and for the other orders in general; for he perceived that it would be the head and chief of all the churches in Ireland." It is related that when he went with his men to mark out the city lines upon the hill, he came upon a doe that had just given birth to a fawn which the men would kill or roughly drive away. But Patrick lifted the helpless fawn tenderly in his arms, and bore it off where it could remain undisturbed-while its mother meekly and trustingly followed, like a pet sheep.

lay before him all the old laws, and, to codify and purge them, called into council upon them three kings, three bishops, three ollams, and they got a poet "to throw a thread of poetry around them."

Now also it probably was that he wrote his famous Confession; and possibly also during this period his second most famous work, his Epistle to Coroticus-works which after fourteen hundred years, still live-and will live." They were written in the rather poor Latin of which Patrick was master, the provincial Latin of the Roman provinces. For, as he humbly stated again and again, he was not of the very learned; and he was profusely apologetic for his temerity in writing what would be read and criticised by the really learned ones, his contemporaries.

"I, Patrick the sinner, unlearned, no doubt," he humbly begins his Epistle to Coroticus, a British prince, who making a raid into Ireland, slaughtered many there, and carried off with him many captives-among them some of Patrick's newly baptised childrer of the Church. "With mine own hand," he says, "have I written and composed these words, to be given and handed to, and sent to, the soldiers of Coroticus." "On the day following that on which the newly baptised in white array were anointed with the chrism, it was still gleaming on their foreheads, while they were cruelly butchered and slaughtered with the sword."

In this intense document Patrick first gives utterance to that cry against British oppression which the agonising heart of Ireland has echoed every year of the past seven hundred and fifty years. 'Is it a crime," he cries out, "to be born in Ireland? Have not we the same God as ye have?" He boldly demands return of the captives, and mercilessly castigates the tyrant who sacrilegiously carried them off.

But of course Patrick's magnum opus, which will live forever, is his Confession. To others, Fathers of the faith, he had been calumniated. One whom he had held to be a dear friend turned disloyal to him and endeavoured to injure him in the eyes of these, his brethren. Amongst other things he informed them of a false step Patrick had taken in his youth. And he evidently had accused him of presumption and egotistical ambition, in assuming to himself the task of converting Ireland. The Confession was written for the purpose of defending himself against the false charges.

11 These, his works, were preserved in the ancient Book of Armagh, into which they were copied by the scribe Firdomnach, about the year 810-there, too, copied, as Firdomnach states from the manuscript in Patrick's own handwriting.

Timidly, and with characteristic humility, but still with a great calm, he opens this famous document:

"I, Patrick, a sinner, the most rustic and the least of all the faithful, and in the estimation of very many deemed contemptible, had for my father Calpornius, a deacon, the son of Potitus, a presbyter, who belonged to the village of Bannaven Taberniae; for close thereto he had a small villa, where I was made a captive.

"At the time I was barely sixteen years of age, I knew not the true God; and I was led to Ireland in captivity with many thousand persons according to our deserts, for we turned away from God and kept not His commandments, and we were not obedient to our priests who used to admonish us about our salvation. And the Lord brought us the indignation of His wrath, and scattered us amongst many nations even to the utmost part of the earth, where now my littleness may be seen amongst strangers.

"And there the Lord opened the understanding of my unbelief so that at length I might recall to mind my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord, my God, who hath regarded my humility and taken pity on my youth and my ignorance, and kept watch over me before I knew Him, and before I had discretion, and could distinguish between good and evil; and He protected me and consoled me as a father does his son."

The part of the Confession which many authorities adduce as testimony that Patrick, with his moderate learning, found himself in Ireland in the midst of very learned ones and great critics, is this:

"For this reason I have long been thinking of writing, but up to the present I hesitated; for I feared lest I should transgress against the tongue of men, seeing that I am not learned like others, who in the best style therefore have drunk in both laws and sacred letters in equal perfection; and who from their infancy never changed their mother tongue; but were rather making it always more perfect.

"My speech, however, and my style were changed into the tongue of the stranger, as can easily be perceived in the flavour of my writings how I am trained and instructed in languages, for as the wise man saith: 'By the tongue wisdom will be discerned, and understanding, and knowledge, and learning of the truth.""

Both his humility and his testimony to the scholars-a scornful one this time-are read out of the following passage of the Confession:

"Whence I, at first a rustic and an exile, unlearned and surely as one who knows not how to provide for the future-yet this I

do most certainly know, that before, I was humble, I was like a stone which lies in the deep mire, and He that is mighty came and in His mercy lifted me up, and placed me on the top of the wall. And therefore I ought to cry out and render something to the Lord for these benefits so great both here and for eternity, that the mind of man can not estimate them.

"Wherefor, be ye filled with wonder both small and great, who fear God, and ye too, lordly rhetoricians, hear and search out. Who was it that exalted me, fool though I be, from the midst of those who seemed to be wise and skilled in the law, and powerful in word and in everything else? And me truly despicable in this world He inspired beyond others, though being such, that with fear and reverence, and without blame I should faithfully serve the nation to whom the love of Christ transferred me and bestowed me for my life, if I should be worthy—that in humility and truth I should serve them." 12

Out of some later sentence in the Confession is taken apparent substantiation of Britain's claim on his nativity where he says:

"Wherefore, however, I might have been willing to leave them, and go into the Brittaniæ, as to my country and relatives, and not only so but also to the Galliæ, to visit my brethren."

"Again after a few years I was in the Brittaniæ with my parents."

This evidence, while colourable, is far from being positive, in favour of his British birth. For one thing, Brittany may well have been called one of the Brittaniæ-which it was; and in the next place, even if he referred to Britain proper, it does not follow that because his family, of which the father was a Roman official, was then in that particular province of the Roman Empire, he and his had been there at the time of Patrick's birth.

The Confession testifies to idol worship in Ireland where it

says:

"Whence Ireland, which never had the knowledge of God, but up to the present always adored idols and things unclean-how are they now made a people of the Lord, and are called the children of God? The sons of the Scots and the daughters of their chieftains are seen to become monks and virgins of Christ."

And again his humility—and also a hint of the accusations made against him-in the following extracts:

"And behind my back they were talking among themselves and

12 In neither of the foregoing instances, however, can we feel sure that he refers to Irish "rhetoricians," or learned ones.