“’Twas so all over Ireland,—wherever Patrick went he turned pagans to Christians and built churches.
“He died in the very place where he first preached to Dicho, on the seventeenth day of March, about the year 465.”
“Is that why we call the seventeenth of March St. Patrick’s Day?” asked Mary Ellen.
“Yes,” replied her father, “it is the day that he died. We don’t rightly know just what day he was born.”
“How do you know so many things about St. Patrick, then, if he lived so many hundred years ago?” asked Kathleen.
“The old books tell us,” her father said. “Patrick, himself, wrote about his wanderings, and the monks copied these books and many others, painting pictures on the pages to illustrate them. It is from these ancient Gaelic books that we learn much about the life and customs of the people.”
“There were books of laws for the kings and the people, too,” said the peddler.
“Did the kings have to obey laws?” asked Kathleen, who supposed kings did just as they chose.
“That they did,” replied the peddler. “There was a law that no man could rule at Tara who was not perfect in his looks; so when Cormac mac Art lost an eye he had to give up being king.”
“’Twas a shame, too, for he was a good king,” said the father.