The story that the occasion of the composition of the Senchus was the slaying of Odhran, Patrick’s charioteer, in order to test Patrick’s doctrine of forgiveness, is told in the Introduction to the Senchus (pp. 4 sqq.) and in the Lehor na hUidre (text and translation, in Stokes, Tripartite, 562 sqq.). A different story of the death of Odhran at the hands of Foilge is told in Vita Quarta, c. 77, and Vita Tertia, c. 59 (where the charioteer’s name is not mentioned): according to this version the missile was aimed at Patrick. This version, but without reference to Foilge, is likewise noticed in the Introduction to the Senchus (p. 6).
The simplest explanation maybe that a driver of Patrick was slain by an enemy, and that the incident was used by Patrick for raising the question of criminal justice; mythopoeic instinct then attributed the murder to a deliberate intention of raising the question.
The story as told in the Introduction seems to preserve a tradition that an attempt was made by Patrick to change the penalty of eric fine for murder into a penalty for death. This is the motive of the poem which is fathered upon Dubthach: “I pronounce the judgment of death, of death for his crime to every one who kills” (p. 13). This is to be reconciled with the Christian doctrine of perfect forgiveness by considering that the body only is killed, the soul is forgiven: the “murderer is adjudged to heaven, and it is not to death he is adjudged” (ib.). The commentator notices the disagreement between this principle, which in the story Patrick is assumed to have established, and the custom of eric fine which actually prevailed, and explains it on the ground that Patrick’s successors had no power of bestowing heaven, hence the death penalty was discontinued, and “no one is put to death for his intentional crimes, as long as ‘eric’-fine is obtained.”
The historical fact underlying this story is, I submit, that the Church in Patrick’s day attempted, unsuccessfully, to supersede the system of composition for manslaughter and private retaliation by making the act a public offence punishable by death.
[The questions connected with the material of the laws, and the Feine, lie quite outside my competence, and do not concern the scope of this book. I may refer to Atkinson’s article “Feine,” in his glossary (Ancient Laws, vol. vi.); Rhŷs, Studies in Early Irish History, pp. 52-55 (Proc, of Brit. Acad. vol. i.). For the legal processes and customs, the chief work is M. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s Études sur le droit celtique, 2 vols. 1895; see also the Prefaces to the volumes of the Ancient Laws, and Sir H. Maine’s Early Institutions.]
13. Patrick’s Visits to Connaught
An analysis of the itinerary which Tírechán has traced for Patrick through Connaught shows that he compressed into a single journey events which must have belonged to different visits. I pointed this out in a paper on the “Itinerary of Patrick in Connaught” (Proc. of R.I.A. xxiv. c. 2, 1903). It was remembered that Patrick visited Connaught three times (Tír. 329₁₂), and we may probably suppose that on the two later occasions he would have not only worked in new fields, but revisited the scenes of his earlier work. Tírechán, who used written material as well as oral information, worked all his records into the compass of a single journey. This is betrayed by a number of inconsistencies in the narrative, and it is possible to show that certain events which he ascribes to the same journey must have happened on different occasions.
1. It is clear that the expedition to Tirawley with the sons of Amolngaid was the principal motive of one visit, and that Patrick must have proceeded direct from Tara to Tirawley. Tírechán’s naive reconstruction implies that having left Tara for this purpose he engaged in a round of missionary activity, not only in Connaught, but in Meath—performing labours which would have occupied years—before he finally reached Tirawley. I have pointed out at length the absurdities involved in the story, op. cit. 166-7.