The Legends of Saint Patrick Part 1

The Legends of Saint Patrick.

by Aubrey de Vere.

INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY.

Once more our readers are indebted to a living poet for wide circulation of a volume of delightful verse. The name of Aubrey de Vere is the more pleasantly familiar because its a.s.sociation with our highest literature has descended from father to son. In 1822, sixty-seven years ago, Sir Aubrey de Vere, of Curragh Chase, by Adare, in the county of Limerick--then thirty-four years old--first made his mark with a dramatic poem upon "Julian the Apostate." In 1842 Sir Aubrey published Sonnets, which his friend Wordsworth described as "the most perfect of our age;" and in the year of his death he completed a dramatic poem upon "Mary Tudor," published in the next year, 1847, with the "Lamentation of Ireland, and other Poems." Sir Aubrey de Vere's "Mary Tudor" should be read by all who have read Tennyson's play on the same subject.

The gift of genius pa.s.sed from Sir Aubrey to his third son, Aubrey Thomas de Vere, who was born in 1814, and through a long life has put into music only n.o.ble thoughts a.s.sociated with the love of G.o.d and man, and of his native land. His first work, published forty- seven years ago, was a lyrical piece, in which he gave his sympathy to devout and persecuted men whose ways of thought were not his own.

Aubrey de Vere's poems have been from time to time revised by himself, and they were in 1884 finally collected into three volumes, published by Messrs. Kegan Paul. Left free to choose from among their various contents, I have taken this little book of "Legends of St. Patrick," first published in 1872, but in so doing I have unwillingly left many a piece that would please many a reader.

They are not, however, inaccessible. Of the three volumes of collected works, each may be had separately, and is complete in itself. The first contains "The Search after Proserpine, and other Poems--Cla.s.sical and Meditative." The second contains the "Legends of St. Patrick, and Legends of Ireland's Heroic Age," including a version of the "Tain Bo." The third contains two plays, "Alexander the Great," "St. Thomas of Canterbury," and other Poems.

For the convenience of some readers, the following extract from the second volume of my "English Writers," may serve as a prosaic summary of what is actually known about St. Patrick.

H. M.

ST. PATRICK.

FROM "ENGLISH WRITERS."

The birth of St. Patrick, Apostle and Saint of Ireland, has been generally placed in the latter half of the fourth century; and he is said to have died at the age of a hundred and twenty. As he died in the year 493--and we may admit that he was then a very old man--if we may say that he reached the age of eighty-eight, we place his birth in the year 405. We may reasonably believe, therefore, that he was born in the early part of the fifth century. His birthplace, now known as Kilpatrick, was at the junction of the Levin with the Clyde, in what is now the county of Dumbarton. His baptismal name was Succath. His father was Calphurnius, a deacon, son of Pot.i.tus, who was a priest. His mother's name was Conchessa, whose family may have belonged to Gaul, and who may thus have been, as it is said she was, of the kindred of St. Martin of Tours; for there is a tradition that she was with Calphurnius as a slave before he married her.

Since Eusebius spoke of three bishops from Britain at the Council of Arles, Succath, known afterwards in missionary life by his name in religion, Patricius (pater civium), might very reasonably be a deacon's son.

In his early years Succath was at home by the Clyde, and he speaks of himself as not having been obedient to the teaching of the clergy. When he was sixteen years old he, with two of his sisters and other of his countrymen, was seized by a band of Irish pirates that made descent on the sh.o.r.e of the Clyde and carried him off to slavery. His sisters were taken to another part of the island, and he was sold to Milcho MacCuboin in the north, whom he served for six or seven years, so learning to speak the language of the country, while keeping his master's sheep by the Mountain of Slieve Miss.

Thoughts of home and of its Christian life made the youth feel the heathenism that was about him; his exile seemed to him a punishment for boyish indifference; and during the years when young enthusiasm looks out upon life with new sense of a man's power--growing for man's work that is to do--Succath became filled with religious zeal.

Three Latin pieces are ascribed to St. Patrick: a "Confession,"

which is in the Book of Armagh, and in three other ma.n.u.scripts; {10a} a letter to Coroticus, and a few "Dieta Patricii," which are also in the Book of Armagh. {10b} There is no strong reason for questioning the authenticity of the "Confession," which is in unpolished Latin, the writer calling himself "indoctus, rusticissimus, imperitus," and it is full of a deep religious feeling. It is concerned rather with the inner than the outer life, but includes references to the early days of trial by which Succath's whole heart was turned to G.o.d. He says, "After I came into Ireland I pastured sheep daily, and prayed many times a day.

The love and fear of G.o.d, and faith and spirit, wrought in me more and more, so that in one day I reached to a hundred prayers, and in the night almost as many, and stayed in the woods and on the mountains, and was urged to prayer before the dawn, in snow, in frost, in rain, and took no harm, nor, I think, was there any sloth in me. And there one night I heard a voice in a dream saying to me, 'Thou hast well fasted; thou shalt go back soon to thine own land;'

and again after a little while, 'Behold! thy ship is ready.'" In all this there is the pa.s.sionate longing of an ardent mind for home and Heaven.

At the age of twenty-two Succath fled from his slavery to a vessel of which the master first refused and finally consented to take him on board. He and the sailors were then cast by a storm upon a desert sh.o.r.e of Britain, possibly upon some region laid waste by ravages from over sea. Having at last made his way back, by a sea pa.s.sage, to his home on the Clyde, Succath was after a time captured again, but remained captive only for two months, and went back home.

Then the zeal for his Master's service made him feel like the Seafarer in the Anglo-Saxon poem; and all the traditions of his home would have accorded with the rise of the resolve to cross the sea, and to spread Christ's teaching in what had been the land of his captivity.

There were already centres of Christian work in Ireland, where devoted men were labouring and drew a few into their fellowship.

Succath aimed at the gathering of all these scattered forces, by a movement that should carry with it the whole people. He first prepared himself by giving about four years to study of the Scriptures at Auxerre, under Germa.n.u.s, and then went to Rome, under the conduct of a priest, Segetius, and probably with letters from Germa.n.u.s to Pope Celestine. Whether he received his orders from the Pope seems doubtful; but the evidence is strong that Celestine sent him on his Irish mission. Succath left Rome, pa.s.sed through North Italy and Gaul, till he met on his way two followers of Palladius, Augustinus and Benedictus, who told him of their master's failure, and of his death at Fordun. Succath then obtained consecration from Amathus, a neighbouring bishop, and as Patricius, went straight to Ireland. He landed near the town of Wicklow, by the estuary of the River Varty, which had been the landing-place of Palladius. In that region he was, like Palladius, opposed; but he made some conversions, and advanced with his work northward that he might reach the home of his old master, Milcho, and pay him the purchase- money of his stolen freedom. But Milcho, it is said, burnt himself and his goods rather than bear the shame of submission to the growing power of his former slave.

St. Patrick addressed the ruling cla.s.ses, who could bring with them their followers, and he joined tact with his zeal; respecting ancient prejudices, opposing nothing that was not directly hostile to the spirit of Christianity, and handling skilfully the chiefs with whom he had to deal. An early convert--Dichu MacTrighim--was a chief with influential connections, who gave the ground for the religious house now known as Saul. This chief satisfied so well the inquiries of Laeghaire, son of Niall, King of Erin, concerning the stranger's movements, that St. Patrick took ship for the mouth of the Boyne, and made his way straight to the king himself. The result of his energy was that he met successfully all the opposition of those who were concerned in the maintenance of old heathen worship, and brought King Laeghaire to his side.

Then Laeghaire resolved that the old laws of the country as established by the judges, whose order was named Brehon, should be revised, and brought into accord with the new teaching. So the Brehon laws of Ireland were revised, with St. Patrick's a.s.sistance, and there were no ancient customs broken or altered, except those that could not be harmonised with Christian teaching. The good sense of St. Patrick enabled this great work to be done without offence to the people. The collection of laws thus made by the chief lawyers of the time, with the a.s.sistance of St. Patrick, is known as the "Senchus Mor," and, says an old poem -

"Laeghaire, Corc Dairi, the brave; Patrick, Beuen, Cairnech, the just; Rossa, Dubtach, Fergus, the wise; These are the nine pillars of the Senchus Mor."

This body of laws, traditions, and treatises on law is found in no ma.n.u.script of a date earlier than the fourteenth century. It includes, therefore, much that is of later date than the fifth century.

St. Patrick's greatest energies are said to have been put forth in Ulster and Leinster. Among the churches or religious communities founded by him in Ulster was that of Armagh. If he was born about the year 405, when he was carried to Ireland as a prisoner at the age of sixteen the date would have been 421. His age would have been twenty-two when he escaped, after six or seven years of captivity, and the date 427. A year at home, and four years with Germa.n.u.s at Auxerre, would bring him to the age of twenty-seven, and the year 432, when he began his great endeavour to put Christianity into the main body of the Irish people. That work filled all the rest of his life, which was long. If we accept the statement, in which all the old records agree, that the time of Patrick's labour in Ireland was not less than sixty years; sixty years bring him to the age of eighty-eight in the year 493. And in that year he died.

The "Letter to Coroticus," ascribed to St. Patrick, is addressed to a petty king of Brittany who persecuted Christians, and was meant for the encouragement of Christian soldiers who served under him.

It may, probably, be regarded as authentic. The ma.s.s of legend woven into the life of the great missionary lies outside this piece and the "Confession." The "Confession" only expresses heights and depths of religious feeling haunted by impressions and dreams, through which, to the fervid nature out of which they sprang heaven seemed to speak. St. Patrick did not attack heresies among the Christians; he preached to those who were not Christians the Christian faith and practice. His great influence was not that of a writer, but of a speaker. He must have been an orator, profoundly earnest, who could put his soul into his voice; and, when his words bred deeds, conquered all difficulties in the way of action with right feeling and good sense.

HENRY MORLEY.

TO THE MEMORY OF WORDSWORTH.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO "THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK."

The ancient records of Ireland abound in legends respecting the greatest man and the greatest benefactor that ever trod her soil; and of these the earlier are at once the more authentic and the n.o.bler. Not a few have a character of the sublime; many are pathetic; some have a profound meaning under a strange disguise; but their predominant character is their brightness and gladsomeness. A large tract of Irish history is dark: but the time of Saint Patrick, and the three centuries which succeeded it, were her time of joy. That chronicle is a song of grat.i.tude and hope, as befits the story of a nation's conversion to Christianity, and in it the bird and the brook blend their carols with those of angels and of men. It was otherwise with the later legends connecting Ossian with Saint Patrick. A poet once remarked, while studying the frescoes of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, that the Sibyls are always sad, while the Prophets alternated with them are joyous. In the legends of the Patrician Cycle the chief-loving old Bard is ever mournful, for his face is turned to the past glories of his country; while the Saint is always bright, because his eyes are set on to the glory that has no end.

These legends are to be found chiefly in several very ancient lives of Saint Patrick, the most valuable of which is the "Tripart.i.te Life," ascribed by Colgan to the century after the Saint's death, though it has not escaped later interpolations. The work was long lost, but two copies of it were re-discovered, one of which has been recently translated by that eminent Irish scholar, Mr. Hennessy.

Whether regarded from the religious or the philosophic point of view, few things can be more instructive than the picture which it delineates of human nature at a period of critical transition, and the dawning of the Religion of Peace upon a race barbaric, but far indeed from savage. That wild race regarded it doubtless as a notable cruelty when the new Faith discouraged an amus.e.m.e.nt so popular as battle; but in many respects they were in sympathy with that Faith. It was one in which the n.o.bler affections, as well as the pa.s.sions, retained an unblunted ardour; and where Nature is strongest and least corrupted it most feels the need of something higher than itself, its interpreter and its supplement. It prized the family ties, like the Germans recorded by Tacitus; and it could not but have been drawn to Christianity, which consecrated them.

Its morals were pure, and it had not lost that simplicity to which so much of spiritual insight belongs. Admiration and wonder were among its chief habits; and it would not have been repelled by Mysteries in what professed to belong to the Infinite. Lawless as it was, it abounded also in loyalty, generosity, and self-sacrifice; it was not, therefore, untouched by the records of martyrs, examples of self-sacrifice, or the doctrine of a great Sacrifice. It loved children and the poor; and Christianity made the former the exemplars of faith, and the latter the eminent inheritors of the Kingdom. On the other hand, all the vices of the race ranged themselves against the new religion.

In the main the inst.i.tutions and traditions of Ireland were favourable to Christianity. She had preserved in a large measure the patriarchal system of the East. Her clans were families, and her chiefs were patriarchs who led their households to battle, and seized or recovered the spoil. To such a people the Christian Church announced herself as a great family--the family of man. Her genealogies went up to the first parent, and her rule was parental rule. The kingdom of Christ was the household of Christ; and its children in all lands formed the tribes of a larger Israel. Its laws were living traditions; and for traditions the Irish had ever retained the Eastern reverence.

In the Druids no formidable enemy was found; it was the Bards who wielded the predominant social influence. As in Greece, where the sacerdotal power was small, the Bards were the priests of the national Imagination, and round them all moral influences had gathered themselves. They were jealous of their rivals; but those rivals won them by degrees. Secknall and Fiacc were Christian Bards, trained by St. Patrick, who is said to have also brought a bard with him from Italy. The beautiful legend in which the Saint loosened the tongue of the dumb child was an apt emblem of Christianity imparting to the Irish race the highest use of its natural faculties. The Christian clergy turned to account the Irish traditions, as they had made use of the Pagan temples, purifying them first. The Christian religion looked with a genuine kindness on whatever was human, except so far as the stain was on it; and while it resisted to the face what was unchristian in spirit, it also, in the Apostolic sense, "made itself all things to all men."

As legislator, Saint Patrick waged no needless war against the ancient laws of Ireland. He purified them, and he amplified them, discarding only what was unfit for a nation made Christian. Thus was produced the great "Book of the Law," or "Senchus Mohr,"

compiled A.D. 439.

The Irish received the Gospel gladly. The great and the learned, in other nations the last to believe, among them commonly set the example. With the natural disposition of the race an appropriate culture had concurred. It was one which at least did not fail to develop the imagination, the affections, and a great part of the moral being, and which thus indirectly prepared ardent natures, and not less the heroic than the tender, to seek their rest in spiritual things, rather than in material or conventional. That culture, without removing the barbaric, had blended it with the refined. It had created among the people an appreciation of the beautiful, the pathetic, and the pure. The early Irish chronicles, as well as songs, show how strong among them that sentiment had ever been. The Borromean Tribute, for so many ages the source of relentless wars, had been imposed in vengeance for an insult offered to a woman; and a discourtesy shown to a poet had overthrown an ancient dynasty.

The education of an Ollambh occupied twelve years; and in the third century, the time of Oiseen and Fionn, the military rules of the Feine included provisions which the chivalry of later ages might have been proud of. It was a wild, but not wholly an ungentle time.

An unprovoked affront was regarded as a grave moral offence; and severe punishments were ordained, not only for detraction, but for a word, though uttered in jest, which brought a blush on the cheek of a listener. Yet an injury a hundred years old could meet no forgiveness, and the life of man was war! It was not that laws were wanting; a code, minute in its justice, had proportioned a penalty to every offence, and specified the Eric which was to wipe out the bloodstain in case the injured party renounced his claim to right his own wrong. It was not that hearts were hard--there was at least as much pity for others as for self. It was that anger was implacable, and that where fear was unknown, the war field was what among us the hunting field is.

The rapid growth of learning as well as piety in the three centuries succeeding the conversion of Ireland, prove that the country had not been till then without a preparation for the gift. It had been the special skill of Saint Patrick to build the good which was lacked upon that which existed. Even the material arts of Ireland he had pressed into the service of the Faith; and Irish craftsmen had a.s.sisted him, not only in the building of his churches, but in casting his church bells, and in the adornment of his chalices, crosiers, and ecclesiastical vestments. Once elevated by Christianity, Ireland's early civilisation was a memorable thing.

It sheltered a high virtue at home, and evangelised a great part of Northern Europe; and amidst many confusions it held its own till the true time of barbarism had set in--those two disastrous centuries when the Danish invasions trod down the sanctuaries, dispersed the libraries, and laid waste the colleges to which distant kings had sent their sons.

Perhaps nothing human had so large an influence in the conversion of the Irish as the personal character of her Apostle. Where others, as Palladius, had failed, he succeeded. By nature, by grace, and by providential training, he had been specially fitted for his task.

We can still see plainly even the finer traits of that character, while the land of his birth is a matter of dispute, and of his early history we know little, except that he was of n.o.ble birth, that he was carried to Ireland by pirates at the age of sixteen, and that after five years of bondage he escaped thence, to return A.D. 432, when about forty-five years old; belonging thus to that great age of the Church which was made ill.u.s.trious by the most eminent of its Fathers, and tasked by the most critical of its trials. In him a great character had been built on the foundations of a devout childhood, and of a youth enn.o.bled by adversity. Everywhere we trace the might and the sweetness which belonged to it, the versatile mind yet the simple heart, the varying tact yet the fixed resolve, the large design taking counsel for all, yet the minute solicitude for each, the fiery zeal yet the genial temper, the skill in using means yet the reliance on G.o.d alone, the readiness in action with the willingness to wait, the habitual self-possession yet the outbursts of an inspiration which raised him above himself, the abiding consciousness of authority--an authority in him, but not of him--and yet the ever-present humility. Above all, there burned in him that boundless love, which seems the main const.i.tuent of the Apostolic character. It was love for G.o.d; but it was love for man also, an impa.s.sioned love, and a parental compa.s.sion. It was not for the spiritual weal alone of man that he thirsted. Wrong and injustice to the poor he resented as an injury to G.o.d. His vehement love for the poor is ill.u.s.trated by his "Epistle to Coroticus,"

reproaching him with his cruelty, as well as by his denunciations of slavery, which piracy had introduced into parts of Ireland. No wonder that such a character should have exercised a talismanic power over the ardent and sensitive race among whom he laboured, a race "easy to be drawn, but impossible to be driven," and drawn more by sympathy than even by benefits. That character can only be understood by one who studies, and in a right spirit, that account of his life which he bequeathed to us shortly before its close--the "Confession of Saint Patrick." The last poem in this series embodies its most characteristic portions, including the visions which it records.

The "Tripart.i.te Life" thus ends: --"After these great miracles, therefore, after resuscitating the dead, after healing lepers, and the blind, and the deaf, and the lame, and all diseases; after ordaining bishops, and priests, and deacons, and people of all orders in the Church; after teaching the men of Erin, and after baptising them; after founding churches and monasteries; after destroying idols and images and Druidical arts, the hour of death of Saint Patrick approached. He received the body of Christ from the Bishop Ta.s.sach, according to the counsel of the Angel Victor. He resigned his spirit afterwards to Heaven, in the one hundred and twentieth year of his age. His body is still here in the earth, with honour and reverence. Though great his honour here, greater honour will be to him in the Day of Judgment, when judgment will be given on the fruit of his teaching, as of every great Apostle, in the union of the Apostles and Disciples of Jesus; in the union of the Nine Orders of Angels, which cannot be surpa.s.sed; in the union of the Divinity and Humanity of the Son of G.o.d; in the union, which is higher than all unions, of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

A. DE VERE.

THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK.

THE BAPTISM OF ST. PATRICK.

"How can the babe baptised be Where font is none and water none?"

Thus wept the nurse on bended knee, And swayed the Infant in the sun.