Saint Patrick

From Ten Saints, by Eleanor Farjeon.
Copyright 1936 by Henry Z. Waick, Inc.

MILCHO, a rich chief of Dalrhidia in County Antrim, stood bargaining on the shore with Nial Navigiallach, an Irish King who had come to that coast to trade. It was in the dawn of the Fifth Century, when the times were rough, and kings were pirates and raiders. The coasts of both Britain and Gaul had reason to fear the raids of Nial of the Nine Hostages. In his boats were many youths whom he had taken captive here and there, and one and another of these was hauled out by Nial's crew of Picts, for Milcho to consider. The rich man needed another slave, and he looked the boys over as a farmer does a horse or a cow in the market. He quarrelled with Nial about the price asked for each, and all the time be had his eye on a lad of sixteen, who sat in the boat with his hands tied together. Captive though he was, there was nothing cowed about him; he held his head up proudly, and Milcho thought he would make a likely slave. So presently, nodding carelessly towards the lad, he asked, "Are you selling that one?"

Nial said, "I might, if I got his price."

"What is he?" asked Milcho.

"One that we took in a raid off the Scottish coast."

No, Nial," broke in one of his men, "it was in that raid off Wales-or would it be the one off Cumberland?"

"Neither," declared another, "we got that boy in Cornwall."

"You're wrong!" cried a third. "That's the one we took off a farm in Gaul."

While the Picts fell to quarrelling about where the boy came from, Milcho said to Nial, "It's all one. What do you want for him, anyhow?" And the chief and the king began their haggling all over again.

Nial had the boy fetched out of the boat, and said to Mileho, "There's a tall one for you!"

"I've seen taller," said Mileho.

"Mark the breadth of his shoulders," said Nial.

"I've known broader, said Mileho.

"Feel the muscles on him!" boasted Nial.

Milcho did so, and said, "I've felt tougher."

The king ran him up, and the chief ran him down, and so at last the bargain was concluded, and Milcbo led the boy away to be his slave on the Mountain of Sleamish.

On the way the chief put questions to the boy, about whom the Picts had made so much argument. "Where did they take you?" he asked.

"From my father's farm at Enon, said the boy.

"Where might that be?"

"On the river's edge."

"What river, boy?"

"The river under Bonavem, where my father is a deacon of the church," said the boy proudly.

"Oho! Perhaps you hoped to be one too."

The boy knew himself to be a little careless of his religion; he answered, "My father hoped so."

"And hasn't your father a name of his own?" asked Mileho.

"His name is Calpurnius. My mother is called Conchessa. She is a Frank's daughter, but my father has the blood of patricians in him."

And what may your name be, my young patrician?"

"Succath," said he.

"Well then, Succath, put away hopes of being a deacon like your da, it was off a farm, not off a church, they took you, and you shall keep my pigs, 0 well-born one!"

"First thrall to Picts, then thrall to pigs," observed Succath. "It's a queer thing life is surely." He stooped to pluck a tiny emerald leaf off the earth. "There's good things growing in this land however," thought he-"and evil ones too!" thought he again, as a viper hissed at him and darted away.

Thus Succath came to Dalrhidia on Mount Sleamish, and when Milcho's people asked, "Where was he born?" the chief replied, "Some say here and some say there," and the boy's birthplace remained for ever a matter of doubt.

Seven years Succath kept his master's pigs, and they were seven years of misery to the slave. But this they did for him, they led his mind, which was no man's slave, to God. His father's faith grew green in him, green as the three-leaved Shamrock by the brown bog where the swine rooted. His labours began early in the dawn; but eager to serve God as well as his master, Succath rose still earlier than he need, and forestalled the daylight with his prayers.

Those seven years meant much to the boy's life. In them he came to speak the Irish tongue so well that you would take him for an Irishman itself, and be grew to know so much of the hearts of the folk that an Irish heart might have beat in his own breast. Moreover, Succath was no meek young man, but had a noble temper of his own, which made him still more like a hot-blooded son of Erin. At the end of the seven years, when he was three and twenty years old, he was more Irish than any other thing, and had a deep love for the island, the people, and the three-leaved shamrock which made the land so green. But some things in it he hated: such as the poison-snakes, whose venom was a danger to life, and the Druid priests, whose magic was a danger to the soul. And he hated his own slavery, which rendered him powerless to become, as was now his dearest wish, a priest of God, when he might fight against evils such as these. Meanwhile he did what he could with fasting and with prayers.

And then one night he heard a voice in his sleep: "Thou fastest well, and shalt soon return to thy country. And again the voice called: "Behold a ship is ready for thee."

When he awoke, Succath knew the time was come for him to go, and he rose and went under the cover of the night. The coast was many miles away, but he travelled safe till he reached it, and there, by God's power, was the ship. She was making ready to set sail for France.

Succath hastened his steps, and asked for passage in her.

"Can you pay?" said the Merchant Master of the ship.

"Yes, when we reach Bonavem," answered Succath.

But the Merchant stared at his mean garb, and roughly bade him be off. Not knowing what to do next he turned towards a little hovel on the shore, where he might hide himself; and as he went he began to say a prayer. It was not even ended, and he had not reached the hut before he heard a sailor shouting, "Turn back! He is asking for you!"-and when Succath came to the ship again, the Merchant simply said, "We will take you on trust." And so the ship set sail with Succath in her, and after three days was brought to beach in Brittany.

It was far from Succath's farmstead, a journey of at least a month, but the merchant-seamen decided to make it with their poor Christian passenger, who would recompense them at the end of it. They had with them their wares with which they hoped to trade in cities or at rich houses on the way. But they found none of these. It was at all times a hard, wild, stony country, and now it was desolate; for the savage Franks had lately ravaged it, taking the cattle and ruining the crops. After many rough and weary days they found themselves as cast away on land as ever at sea, and in a lonely forest, where they stayed exhausted, the Merchant thought they must all die of hunger. In his despair he turned to Succath and cried, Christian! Is your God so powerful? Pray for us, lest we starve!"

"Have faith," said Succath, and fell on his knees and prayed. Soon there was a mighty stir in the forest, and a herd of wild pigs came trampling down the underbrush. With a shout the famished sailors sprang to their feet; and that night the forest was full of the smoke of wood-fires, and the smell of roast meat. The travellers stayed two days recovering their strength, and before they went from that place the Merchant came to Succath with wild honey in his hands. 'See what I have found in a hollow tree," he said. "Take your share as an offering, Christian, and God be thanked."

So, after many years, when the young man came to his own door again, and the merchants took leave of him, he knew they carried with them something of his faith.

But Succath found he could not rest at home. The need to become a priest urged him elsewhere, for all the pleas of his friends and family; and chance or heaven led his feet south to Tours, whose bishop was the venerable Saint Martin. Martin was very old, Succath was young, but the younger and the elder met in their love of God. When Succath had spoken with the Saint in his green cabin on the banks of the Loire, where he lived still like a hermit, Martin said: "If you wish to be my disciple I will teach you all I can; and because you are of a wellborn Roman strain, you shall be called, not Succath, but Patricius."

So Patricius, whom now we may at last call, in the Irish manner, Patrick, realized his wish and became a monk, dwelling in a sandstone cave by the river, as all Martin's disciples did. From a monk he was to become a priest, from a priest a bishop. While he was on the road, and still a young man, he had a dream one night in which be saw written the words: "THE VOICE OF THE IRISH." Then he heard sounds of voices crying from a thicket where people were lost in the dark: "We entreat thee, 0 holy boy, come and walk again in our midst!" And Patrick awoke, moved to the depths of his soul.

But the time was not ripe till he was a man in his prime, when he heard that Pope Celestine thought of sending a mission to preach the Gospel in Ireland. Who was so fitted for that mission as Patrick the bishop, who as Succath the slave had learned to speak the tongue, and know the land, and love the people? So once again a boat bore Patrick to the emerald isle, even as one had borne him thirty years earlier; but this time he went with unbound hands, that carried a bishop's crozier into Ireland.



One April day the herdsmen of Lecale in County Down looked over the sea and saw a boat coming, full of strange men. Their coming meant one thing only to these simple fellows, and they took to their heels and ran to the great barn where Dichu, their chieftain, was busy. "Master, make ready!" they shouted, "for the marauders are upon us again!"

Dichu came -out of his barn, and called to his servants to arm and follow him; and he hastened down to the waterside, with his shield on his arm and his spear in his hand. But when he saw the boatful of men on the shore he was puzzled, for they were unarmed, and their leader smiled peaceably upon him.

"Who are you, strangers?" asked Dichu.

The leader answered him in his own tongue. "My name is Patrick, and once I was a slave in this land, yet in my soul I was more free than you who live under the shadow of the Druids. And now I am come to make you as free as I was." "Step up to my house, Padruic, and tell me more," said Dichu. He signed to his followers to lower their spears, and brought Patrick and his monks into his hall, and made them welcome. When they had eaten, he bade the bishop speak, and Patrick stood up and said such things as had never before been said or heard in Erse. He had God's light in his heart, and God's gift on his tongue, and his eloquence was like fire that catches everywhere, and his reason like the tides that are according to heaven. Dichu had but to listen and believe, and he demanded instant baptism. But what then? There was no church handy, indeed, there was as yet none in all Ireland.

"Come into your own barn, Dichu," said the Saint, "and be baptized on your own threshing-floor."

And then and there divine worship was celebrated, among the tools and the grain, and Dichu and his servants were made Christians. Sabhall-Padruic, or Patrick's Barn, they called it ever after. Soon the whole place round about became known as Saul, out of the name of the barn, and it became Saint Patrick's favourite resting-place, after his long journeys here and there. Many journeys be made about the land, and now he was listened to, now driven away. Now he converted multitudes like the stones on the shore, now one or two only, like precious pebbles picked up in this place or that. It is no easy thing to change the faith of a people, or to lift from them a power that has lain on them for many hundred years. Fear of the Druids was the power over that land. Among those who would not listen was Milcho, in search of whom Patrick had gone on foot. His old master would not even see the Saint who once had kept his swine; and perhaps this time it was not fear of the Druids that was in it. But swiftly and slowly, and always steadily, Patrick's word was weakening the sway of the Irish magicians, and they themselves were growing aware of it.

Everywhere that men and women gathered in knots, miraculous tales were whispered from ear to ear.

"Have you heard? This Patrick has given back to blind Sheila the sight of her eyes!"

"Have you heard? When Sean was lying dead upon his bed, this Patrick came and raised him to life again!"

"Have you heard? He preached one cold morning on a mountaintop, and the limbs of his listeners froze, and they had neither food nor fuel to warm them. This Patrick set them all to heaping snowballs, and breathed upon the heap, and that white heap of ice became a red-hot fire!"

"And have you heard how Lochu the Ma us challenged him to a trial of magic, and Lochu spread his hands and rose up in the air halfway to the sky, but this Patrick only folded his and said a prayer, and a white arm reached out of a cloud and flung a snowball at Lochu, and he tumbled down head foremost at Patrick's feet!"

"And this have you heard, how Patrick built a hut of green wood and dry, and he challenged a Magus to sit in the green half wearing a monk's robe, and in the dry half he sate the Monk in the robe of the Magus, and then he set fire to the hut. And it was the green wood that burned, and the Magus with it, yet the holy habit was not even singed; and the dry timber would not catch, and the Monk had not so much as a blister, though the evil robe was shrivelled off him by the heat!" "Have you heard" this and that wonder ran like wildfire from place to place, and each new tale of Patrick spelled the Druids' downfall. Till at last men were telling the tale of the great encounter that finished them entirely.

The Saint had offered them his blessing, but they would have none of it, and held by their magic obstinate as mules, though Patrick told them, "Your magic is the curse of the country."

"Beware lest it be a curse on yourself," said they.

"On me, is it? Let you beware!" cried he. "If it comes to cursing, there's none can do it better than a bishop when he's roused. Yet I'd rather give you my blessing."

But when the Druids still sought to overthrow him with their spells, even the holy Patrick knew they were past his prayers. So he raised his hands over their fields, saying sternly: "I set my curse on you!" The Druids' crops and pastures turned immediately into bogs, and they saw their chief means of living vanish under their eyes.

"Will you let me bless you now?" asked Patrick.

"We can eat fish," they said. And they sat on the river-banks with rod and line, and filled their creels, and went on playing their tricks.

Then Patrick raised his hands over their rivers, crying again: "I set my curse on you!" The rivers ceased to have fish in them on the spot.

"Now shall I bless you?" asked Patrick.

"You shall not!" roared the Druids, and ran to their homes and put their kettles on. Heaven knows what dark spells they meant to brew over their fires, to destroy the holy terror they were no match for. But the Saint pursued them to their very hearths, and raising his hands over their kettles cried: "I set my curse on you!" And the kettles stopped boiling at once.

The Druids piled brushwood in armfuls on the red-hot peat, in vain. The wood flamed, the peat glowed, and the kettles stayed cold.

"Will you be blessed now?" said Patrick.

"We will not!" said they.

Then the Saint gave them up for a bad job. The land must be rid of its evils, and nothing was so evil in the land as they. He raised his hands for the fourth time, and pronounced his curse on their heads; and the earth opened under their feet and swallowed them up.

But the reptiles remained.

There never was a land so full of snakes. The reptiles he had hated in his slavery had multiplied out of all count, and now the tale went that this Patrick had sworn to rid Erin's soil of their poison, as he had rid her soul of the Druids' venom. A task indeed for any ordinary manl How would he set about it? Have you heard? He has made a vow: "I'll drum them out of the country!"

So he made himself a drum, and cut two stout sticks, and flourished them on his march across the land, drumming till his arms ached. Serpents, snakes, and scorpions fled before him. You never heard such drumming, or saw such flourishes! But his holy fervour nearly destroyed him entirely, for he struck the drum one such mighty blow that he knocked a hole through it. When next he struck, the virtue bad gone out of the sound, and who knows what those millions of reptiles might not have done to him if an angel had not flown down out of heaven and patched up the hole? From that out, Patrick drummed more carefully, till the last little snake was driven into the sea; and then he blessed the land, so that they could never come back. Since then there has not been a snake or a Druid in Ireland.

It is one thing to destroy, it is another to build. If the land was cleared of the body of evil, superstition lingered on like its ghost. Patrick knew he had his chief work to do; he must teach the simple people of the country, and harder than that, the wise men of the cities.

Easter, the Christians' holy festival, was also a time of festival for the pagans, when they observed the Rites of Spring, and celebrated the sun's return to power. In the Temple of Temora on the Hill of Tara, King Leogaire and many princes and sages would assemble, and there would be gatherings on every height. Some days earlier all fires would be extinguished, as a symbol of the dark before the spring; and on a certain night the sacred fire in the Temple would be rekindled, a symbol that spring-fire had come back to the earth. Then the gatherings would flock to re-light their own fires from the sacred flame.

That Easter-Eve the twilight was thronged with watchers on the hills, waiting to see the tongue of fire on Tara, where the greatest crowd of all surrounded the King. The spring dusk showed no sign of light on earth, though heaven had begun to light her stars. The mystery and the revelation were near. Suddenly there were murmurs of fear and dismay.

"Look yonder! yonder! there's a red spark shining."

"Where?"

"On the plains of Shane! There is fire on the earth, too soon!"

"Some one has broken our ritual!" cried the King.

"Sacrilege! sacrilege!" cried the angry crowd.

"O King!" said one of the wise men who was present, "this fire if it is not put out will vanquish ours."

The King leapt to horse, and galloped away towards Shane, followed by the sages with the peasants at their heels. Among them stumbled little Here, a child. They reached the place where Patrick was with his monks, tending the fire which he had dared to light. Leogaire seated himself, and bade those with him do the same-"And let none rise, he commanded, "when the law-breaker stands before me."

Then Patrick was brought into Leogaire's presence. He looked so tall and noble in his bishop's robes that little Herc stood up and said, "A blessing on you!" That child became the Bishop of Shane one day. The Saint smiled on the child, but the King frowned on the Saint as he asked roughly why Patrick had broken the law of his gods.

"I have not broken the law of my God," said Patrick. "This fire is holy fire, the Pascal fire."

"We know not that fire," said the King, "and my sages say it is dangerous."

"Let me argue that with your sages," offered Patrick. "Let me come to Tara to-morrow in the morning, and tell you all the meaning of this fire." And so it was agreed.

On Easter Day Patrick went up to the Temple, and all were assembled to hear him dispute with the wise men. They questioned him on the doctrines of his faith, and Patrick silenced their questions with the eloquence of his answers. He had wanted nothing more than this chance to make Ireland hear the Doctrine of the Trinity. It would have been a hard thing for another to make plain to the clouded minds of the pagan princes and sages, but what did Patrick do? He stooped down and plucked a little emerald plant out of the ground, the three-leaved shamrock grown in their own soil, and he said:

"This plant, that you know as well as you know the, thoughts in your head, see how its three joined leaves spring from a single stem. If this has never seemed strange to you, let me now tell you something just as natural." And keeping the three-leaved shamrock for a symbol, he spoke to them of the Triple Personality of God.

Many converts were made that Easter morning. Dubtach the Bard sprang up and cried, "From this day I vow my gift of song to your Christ!" And Conall, a brother of the King, was baptized. And although Leogaire himself was not, he was so far pleased that he gave Patrick leave to preach the Word of God wherever he would.

He preached it everywhere. In County Meath the chiefs gave him their sons to teach, and he left behind him a colony of Christians that flourished like the shamrock. In County Leitrim he destroyed the Crom-Cruach, the crooked monument where the Druids had sacrificed to the sun. In County Connaught he was found by the daughters of King Leogaire, chanting God's praise beside their father's fountain. Ethnea the Fair and Fethlima the Ruddy had come down to the fountain to bathe. Full of awe, they questioned the white-robed singer, and by sunrise had accepted all he told them, and were baptized in the water of the fountain. In Sligo and Roscommon he built churches; Lent he spent praying on Croagh Aigle in Mayo. In Firawley he baptized seven princes and twelve hundred peasants. In Wicklow Prince Deichin would have none of him, but the poor herd Killan slew his one cow to feed him. In Munster, where he baptized Aengus the Chief, he set by chance his crozier on Aengus's great toe. The toe was pierced, but Aengus thought, "This must just be a part of it," and never let a sound. He supposed the flowing of blood was to do with the rites, and Patrick did not know the thing he had done, till those standing round began to murmur: "Behold the Strutb-fhuil, behold the Stream of Blood!" Struill they call the place to this very day.

More sad is the tale of the devout and simple Colmar, who during a great heat toiled in the harvest-field from morning to night. Such a thirst was on him that he could hardly endure it, yet because be had heard that Patrick had forbidden the drink before Vespers, he would not sip water. That was not the drink Patrick had in mind at all, but Colmar mistook his meaning, and laboured, ached, and thirsted all the day, and as the bell let fall cool drops of sound on the evening air, Colmar with a sigh lay down and died.

"There lies Colmar Stadhach, Colmar the Thirsty," said his fellows. And maybe after that St. Patrick made it plain that when he spoke of the drink he meant poteen. We may believe water his favourite drink, so many are the wells named after him; some say he drank poteen too, now and then, some even say be was the first one to distill it. What will they not say!

At the end of twenty years the Saint saw his work in Ireland nearly completed. For his See be chose a hill in County Armagh, a beautiful site. But when he asked the owner for it, this man, whose name was Daeri, answered, "No, I want the hill myself, yot can have a bit in the valley." Patrick went meekly away. Then Daeri felt out with himself, and looked about for a present for the bishop. He found a huge cauldron, holding three firkins, and his churls carried it behind him to the place where Patrick was.

"There!" said Daeri. "This cauldron is for you anyhow."

Gratias agam!" said the Saint, for sometimes he forgot and said thanks in Latin instead of in Erse.

Daeri scratched his head, and went home muttering, "Gratzacham! What's Gratzacham? Only a fool would say Gratzacham for a cauldron the like of that. Gratzacham indeed!" By the time he reached his door, be was so vexed that he shouted, "Churls! Go fetch my cauldron back again!"

The churls went, and returned with the cauldron.

"What did he say?" asked Daeri.

"He said Gratzacham again."

"Gratzacbam when I give! Gratzacham when I take!" Daeri burst out laughing. "If he's a fool, he's a good-natured one! For that Gratzacham he shall have both the cauldron and the hill." And he ran to Patrick himself to tell him so.

When Patrick went to view the site for his cathedral he found a roe on the hill-top, suckling her fawn. The Saint carried the fawn on his shoulders to a quiet spot, and the roe trotted beside him; when they were happily together again, Patrick returned to the hill, and marked the roe's warm bed as the place for his altar. There, at the first synod held in Armagh, he celebrated Mass.

And now, having done so much for his dear Ireland, he turned his thoughts on Scotland over the water. His feet followed his thoughts, and that journey left the trail of his name on Britain. There's Kilpatrick in Dumbartonshire, and Cragphadrig in Inverness. He had a church in Kirkpatrick, and from Portpatrick he took boat for Westmoreland, where the dale he preached in men called Patterdale; even as in Wales they named where he walked Sam-badrig, or Patrick's Causeway. The sea has swallowed up Sam-badrig now, it is a shoal in Carnarvon Bay that ships steer clear of. Patricks and Patters, Badrigs and Phadrigs, he strewed his name over rocks and churches, islands and valleys, causeways and cells, as a running stag scatters his scent. You could trace the Saint's journey across Britain by the names be left behind him in three tongues.

But it was in Ireland, long time after, that he died, in Ireland where he had baptized twelve thousand souls with his own hand, and built as many churches as there are days in a year; in Ireland, where he had served as a slave in his youth, as a saint in his age, he closed his eyes at last when his work was done. He was one hundred and twenty years old, they say. "Have you heard? Our Bishop was taken ill in Sabhall-Padruic, and thought it would be fitting to die in Armagh, so weak as he was he set out. And on the way a blessed angel came down out of heaven and turned him back to Saul, the place he loved best."

It was on the Seventeenth day of March that Patrick died. Since nobody quite knew when and where be was born, that day became his feast, Ireland his country, and the three-leaved emerald shamrock his own emblem, worn throughout Erin on St. Patrick's Day.

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