Ireland

by Frank Delaney

  He slept on the mountain in all weathers, trying to keep the pigs near places where he could best shelter, and managing to raise his spirits when a day dawned clear and mild. In summer, naturally, life was a bit more enjoyable, but in winter those cold northern winds found every bone in his body and turned the marrow to ice.

  However, Patrick had been raised to use such resources as he had; the Romans were an advanced people. Therefore he made sure to try and extract whatever benefit he could from his difficult circumstances. One of the tasks he set himself was to learn the local speech, the Irish language. A shrewd decision; not only did it help him to understand what was going on around him, it became a great asset to him later.

  Altogether he spent six bitter years up there among the pigs, a hard life, full of despair, lonely, dangerous, and without hope. Later in his life he wrote about his experiences, a kind of autobiography they call “Patrick’s Confession.” In it he described how, hail, rain, and snow, he prayed and prayed on that mountain, to whatever gods he knew, that his burdens might be lifted.

  One night, while he was sleeping wrapped in his rough cloak, his life changed for the better. He had a dream in which a wonderful voice told him, “Patrick, Patrick—your ship has arrived.” He was a little scared at first, and then very puzzled. But when he thought about it, he believed this must be an answer from one of the gods he had been praying to, and he assumed it meant that he should now try to escape and get back to his own people.

  He didn’t rush matters; he thought it all through very carefully, and then one day Patrick said good-bye to his pigs, slipped away from the mountain, and headed out into the countryside. Some say he went southeast to Waterford, some say he went southwest to Dingle, some say he went northwest to Derry. All we know is that in some Irish seaport, a captain allowed him on board a rough ship, where Patrick had to quarter with the cargo, a pack of dogs.

  The ship sailed from Ireland, and after a long and hard journey down the Bay of Biscay, the captain landed Patrick far south in France. From there, he journeyed slowly back, getting work where he could in order to eat. At last, after many, many months, he arrived home in Scotland, where his parents were understandably delighted to see him. They gave him a wonderful welcome and, deep in their home, took care of him with all the warmth they possessed.

  He had barely recovered from these long and difficult adventures when, one night, he had another dream. He dreamed that a man called Victor approached him with a handful of letters and started handing them over one by one. When Patrick began to read the first letter, he also heard a ghostly chorus of the people who wrote it. This became known as the famous “Vox Hibernicorum,” as Patrick called it in Latin—“Voice of the Irish”—and the words they chanted were, “O, holy young man, we beg thee to come here again and walk among us.” Of course, he knew who they were because he had learned to speak the Irish language.

  Patrick accepted the message of his dreams. He left his family in Ballantrae, went to Europe, and embraced Christianity. Very soon he entered the priesthood and trod the long and sometimes tedious road of the seminarian. After his ordination he embarked upon a career in the church, and while still a young man he was made a bishop, which gives you some idea of how he impressed his superiors; bishops are not generally young men.

  Then the great time of Patrick’s life began. He returned to Ireland with a powerful mission—to bring to the Irish people the word of the Christian God. It was the year four-thirty-two, and Patrick had quite a task facing him.

  Although it hadn’t yet reached our shores, the Christian faith had grown very clear in itself. It proclaimed no other gods except the one—and in that one true God dwelt the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The carpenter from Galilee, Jesus Christ, was born the Son of God to a chosen girl, Mary, and he died on the cross of Calvary so that the word of God would be carried around the world. That was what the apostles preached after the crucifixion of Christ, and that was the basis of the Christian religion.

  But the Irish, in common with all pagan countries, had many, many deities. Gods lived in the trees, the rivers, deep in the earth, high on the mountains, up in the sky. Also, they knew their gods well; they knew who they were dealing with.

  If it takes some skill to make any one person change his beliefs, it takes a remarkable man indeed to convert a whole country. By then, though, Patrick’s own life had shaped him very well for the job in hand. He came from a noble family and therefore mixed easily with nobility; he knew how their lives worked. Remember too that he had been a slave; therefore he knew what life was like at the bottom of the heap. So: can you imagine a man better qualified? Especially when you consider that he was also able to translate the Latin and Greek of Christianity into the Irish language.

  And he had other assets; one of them—you’ll be surprised at this—was sin. Now, we’re all aware that sin isn’t exactly what you’d call an asset, but Patrick turned it into one. He let everyone know that when he was a young man he had committed a great sin; he says so in his own writing. Nobody knows what the sin was—he never specified. Some writers guess that he stole. Others say he killed a man. And it might have been something else altogether, something we don’t talk about in mixed company.

  Whatever it was, Patrick said how it weighed on him. He also exploited it—because it enabled him to meet people on an equal footing. He was able to say, “Look, I’m not above you. I have my faults, too. I’ve done terrible things.” Just because someone had once sinned, he said, didn’t mean they were bad through and through. And that was part of his work in life—to show that people might sin and still go on to live good lives.

  His next great asset was love. He was a man who loved everything under the sun—the flowers, the birds, the clouds, animals, the day, the night. And he loved the Irish people; even though his earliest times here had been miserable, he truly loved us and our country. He also understood that when you show people that you like them, they tend to like you in return—not always, but it often works.

  His most important asset of all, though, was that he had a plan. He had worked out what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. The task of conversation, as Patrick saw it, boiled down to two factors—who would be the most effective people to whom he could first preach, and how could he get his message across?

  The shrewd man aimed to convert the kings and chieftains first. People like being loyal to their superiors, and he knew that example is the best leader; if he could sway a king, he could convert everybody else along the scale, right down to the slaves. A good and prudent strategy, and it worked by and large—but it truly succeeded because of how he preached to them, the examples and the oratory he used. Patrick developed a particular tactic, and I believe it accounts for why his conversion of Ireland was so successful.

  This is what he did: he knew he had to come to terms with the pagan gods, to whom, as I say, the Irish were deeply attached. But if he could keep them comfortable with what they already had, and if he could use what they already knew, he’d succeed.

  The result was, he reinterpreted what they knew as “pagan” and called it “Christian.” He didn’t dismiss what they had called “holy”—he included it. If there was a tree where people worshipped, that became a holy tree. We have all seen such trees or bushes, festooned with rags where people made offerings to a local saint. They existed in Patrick’s time too, but where the people had been worshipping a pagan god at that tree, he now made it the shrine of some saint.

  Or if there had been a sacred stone so large and peculiar that ancient people believed a god dwelt in it, Patrick said mass on that rock, and thereafter they called it Patrick’s Rock. If it was a well where a demon lived, he blessed the water and turned it into holy water, and it became known immediately and forever as “Patrickswell.”

  In other words, he reached deep into the land, into the countryside, into the natural life where the gods had been living. And he told everyone that the world was made by the sole Christian
God, and that they and everything they saw were part of God’s greater glory.

  The best example of this gave us one of our national symbols, the shamrock. Patrick was trying to explain how the Christian trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost worked—three persons in one God. He could tell from their faces that his listeners were finding it difficult, so he bent down and picked up a stalk from the shamrock that grows everywhere in Ireland.

  “Look,” he said. “Three persons in one God, three leaves on one stem.”

  Not a totally satisfactory symbol in my view, especially when you consider that folks are always looking for a four-leafed clover. But the people grasped it, and the shamrock became Patrick’s own sacred symbol.

  My favorite example of his preaching had to do with his teeth. A few miles from here is the place you all know as Kilfeakle. Well, on the left side of his jaw, Patrick had a bad tooth. When he looked at its reflection in a bowl of clear water, he could see that it was black, and when he held it between thumb and forefinger, it wobbled. And it was sore.

  One night, his mission party stopped in a field not far from here, where Patrick’s followers built for him a shelter of poles and leafy branches. It was dark, and Patrick’s tooth was driving him crazy. He gripped it between his thumb and forefinger, to see if he could make it wobble enough to come away from the gum.

  Not looking where he was stepping, Patrick stumbled, and his hand jerked the tooth out. He was delighted—and he proclaimed that in honor of God he would build a church on that very spot. Now, as you know, the Irish word for church is cill or kil, and the Irish word for tooth is fiacail or feakle, and that’s how the hill of Kilfeakle got its name. Of course, if he founded a church every place the word feakle appears, the man must have been a dental wonder. Or he lost all his teeth in Ireland, which is, of course, entirely possible.

  So that’s how Patrick converted our ancestors to Christianity. He preached here, there, and everywhere, on riverbanks, hillsides, and mountaintops, under trees, standing on flat rocks, at the doors of great houses. He told the story of Christ to the Irish people—to kings and queens, farmers, milkmen, slaves, servantmen, and dairymaids. He told them the miracles. He told them the parables. He told them the mysteries. He told them Christ was the grandest man who ever lived. And of course he told them Christ was God, too, and was also the son of God, and that he lived everywhere.

  But, unlike the days when they had to remember which god they were appealing to—this single, great God, Patrick said, had created them and knew them intimately and would recognize who they were when they prayed to him. They loved it, they embraced it, they sank on their knees to introduce themselves to this great God of all, who loved them and who wanted them to be with Him when they died.

  And that’s the same faith preached in every local church in Ireland every Sunday throughout the year. It came straight down from Patrick, and most of Ireland continues to live by it—even though the English tried their best to kill it. Content in this new faith, our forefathers turned the soil, tilled the earth, said their new prayers, and were happy.

  Now: I said I’d tell you how he drove the snakes—and the devil—out of Ireland. And I will. Both matters happened in the same hour and at the same place, and a great relief it has been to us all ever since.

  One day, Patrick and his followers came to this fine house out in the open countryside, right in the middle of Ireland, in the county that today we call Offaly. The house sat on a high, grassy mound, a manmade fort. A river flowed past the gate, and birds floated on the water, happy and chirping. Children played and men worked, just like you’d find in a farmyard today.

  This was the house of a man by the name of Gara. He sat at the top of the social tree, because he was a farmer of some wealth, which was measured by how many cattle a man owned. Gara had many beasts, and he fed and clothed his family from what he produced on his own land; he was an independent man.

  If you walked into Gara’s house, you wouldn’t be able to see at first on account of the darkness. And just as you were getting used to the dark, the smoke would sting your eyes, because those houses had no chimneys, only a hole in the thatched roof to let out the smoke from the fire. But smoke isn’t biddable, it doesn’t always rise up in a straight blue column—it likes to meander before it escapes. As a consequence those houses were very smoky.

  Hanging over the hearth, you’d probably see a large iron pot being licked by the flames from the logs; and near the fire sat several other such pots, of varying sizes. Over by the window would be a bench with all kinds of tools—knives for skinning; a scythe for cutting down the straw and the rushes with which to repair the building; a round stone kept in a bowl of water and used for sharpening the knives and scythes; a bucket of milk under the table, and a cat eyeing it. Gara was a wealthy man, and his house had everything it needed.

  And he was more than just a farmer. Gara also dealt in cowhides, very important for making shoes and other leather goods. Besides that, he bred horses, as any worthy Irishman always wants to do.

  He also sat as a judge. We called our judges “Brehons” in the old days, and many of the laws they set down still control our dealings in land—rights-of-way, ownership, boundaries, and the like.

  At that time Ireland had no elected parliament, as we know it, no central organization to make laws and govern the people of the whole island. Kings made the rules, but in due time the kings looked to these judges. If a king in a neighboring province heard of a law that he hadn’t passed—perhaps it concerned grazing rights, or injury due to an accident, or some such civil matter—he’d observe its usefulness and relevance. And then he himself would pass the same law, or something like it.

  Gara was renowned for lawmaking and for intelligence in such matters, and therefore he had wide influence, which made him important to Patrick, whom he now welcomed.

  “I’m very interested in hearing what you have to say.”

  Patrick said, “Do you know who I am?”

  “It’s a small world, and I receive many visitors. They tell me you have been sweeping across the land like a wind from the south—warm and good.”

  Patrick never traveled without a considerable retinue of men and women, and sometimes their children. Many of the followers wanted to look after him, fetch his milk, toast his bread at the fire, cook his meat, wash his clothes. Others, who did less work, wanted to hear him every time he preached the word of God, because they themselves longed to go and do likewise.

  And there must have been one or two who enjoyed the excitement—because it was thrilling, following this tall, white-robed man with his long beard, with his five-foot wooden staff and the motley who went with him, all jostling to get closer to him, to hear him, to get his attention. And everyone seemed happy and inspired.

  By now Patrick’s name was growing famous throughout the land, and the people he had not yet met—such as Gara—had a great eagerness to see him.

  Gara called his wife, his family, and his servants out into the open fort. The weather smiled on them, and they made arrangements to feed all these strangers—chicken and beef and lamb and pork, bread made of wheat and goblets of ale and warm milk, all set down on a long wooden table. Patrick sat at the place of honor on Gara’s right hand and began to tell Gara and his family about the seven days of Creation. They loved hearing about the making of day and night, about separating the earth from the ocean and the instant growing of the herbs and the fruit trees and the making of the morning and the evening and the birds of the air and the creatures of the sea and the beasts of the fields and the creeping things and so on and so forth.

  Then he told them the story of Jesus Christ. They grew wide-eyed at the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the healing of the sick, the raising of Lazarus from the tomb. What manner of man was this, who could walk on water? That was the question Patrick always planted in the minds of his listeners so that they’d reach by themselves the conclusion that the carpenter from the shores of Lake Ga
lilee wasn’t just a mere man, he was a god too.

  Patrick concluded with the five phases that ended Christ’s life: the agony in the garden of Gethsemane; the scourging at the pillar by the Roman soldiers; the crowning with thorns; the carrying of the cross up to the hill and the crucifixion on Good Friday, when at three o’clock in the afternoon the sun darkened and the earth trembled as Christ died. When he finished, Gara looked at him, tears in his eyes.

  “And they did all this to him just because he was a good man?”

  Patrick replied, “The good are a danger to the corrupt. So it is now; so it has always been.”

  All around that long table, even among Patrick’s followers who had heard him tell of these events many times, the tears shone in the people’s eyes. Even the very young children remained quiet long after Patrick had finished.

  Gara sighed. “Your God is for me,” he said. “And I think I speak for everyone in this place. I’ve never heard anything as powerful. No wonder all Ireland is talking about you.”

  Patrick placed a hand on the good man’s head and blessed him, and within an hour Gara and all his household had embraced the new faith. Drawing water from the crystal clear well outside the ramparts, Patrick baptized them all, leaving Gara until last.

  The good man, with the waters of christening streaming down his face, said to Patrick, “I want to give something back to you. But it’s a strange gift. It’ll ensure for you the following of all the people of the south.”

  Patrick said, “I’d welcome that.”

  “South of here,” says Gara, “about three days of traveling at comfortable speed, you’ll see ahead of you a big flat mountain. That’ll be the most important place you’ll ever come to in Ireland.”

  “Why so?” said Patrick.

  All of you here tonight know which mountain Gara meant—the Devil’s Bit. About twenty-five miles north of this house as the crow flies, near the town of Templemore, the mountain rises alone out of the plain with no other hill near it.