ULIDIAN LEGENDS
The most irreproachable contemporary evidence could hardly testify more clearly to the deep impression that St. Patrick made upon the dwellers of the Island-plain than the fact that their mythopoeic instinct was stirred, at a very early stage, to explain one of the natural features of their country by the miraculous powers of their teacher. According to one story an uncivil and grasping neighbour seized two oxen of St. Patrick, which were at pasture. The saint cursed him: “Mudebrod! thou hast done ill. Thy land shall never profit thee.” And on the same day the sea rushed in and covered it, and the fruitful soil was changed into a salt marsh. The motive of such tales is to account for the origin of the salt marshes which mark the northern border of the island-plain on the shores of Lake Strangford,[82] and they show that the figure of St. Patrick had inspired popular imagination in those regions at an early period.
CHAPTER VI
IN MEATH
§ 1. King Loigaire’s Policy
It has been already pointed out that the Roman terminus did not mark the limit of Roman influence. That influence extended beyond the bounds of the Empire. The existence of the majestic Empire was a fact of which its free neighbours had to take cognisance, and which impressed itself on their minds as one of the great facts of the universe. They were forced into intercourse, whether hostile or peaceful, with the Roman republic. We have seen that it must have affected the folks of Ireland who were the neighbours of the British and Gallic provinces, though severed by narrow seas. The soil of that island had indeed never been trodden by Roman legions, but its ports were not sealed to the outer world, and from the first century the outer world practically meant the Roman world. The men of Ireland in the fourth century must have conceived their island as lying just outside the threshold of a complex of land and sea, over which the power of Rome stretched to bounds almost inaccessible to their imagination. When the grasp of Rome relaxed or her power grew weak in the neighbouring provinces of Britain, the Irish speedily became aware, and, like the Germans, failed not to seize opportunities for winning spoil and plunder; but, though they appear in Roman records as wasters and enemies, this does not imply that they had no respect and veneration for Rome and her civilisation. The compatibility of veneration with hostile behaviour on the part of barbarians is shown by the attitude of the Germans in all their dealings with the Empire which they dismembered. We may be sure that the Iberians and Celts of Ireland, who were certainly not inferior in intelligence to the Germans or less open to new ideas, were qualified to admire the majesty of the Roman name and to feel curiosity about the immense empire which dominated their horizon. Some of their own folk, as we saw, had found new habitations in Roman territory,[83] and thus formed a special channel for Roman influence to trickle into the free island.
The chief influence was the infiltration of the Christian religion. The adoption of this religion by the Imperial government in the fourth century must have had, as we have seen, a sensible effect in conferring prestige on Christianity beyond the boundaries of the Empire. It became inevitable that the favoured creed should henceforth be closely associated with the Empire in the idea of barbarians and regarded as the Roman religion. Hence that religion acquired, on political grounds, a higher claim on their attention.
KING LOIGAIRE
We must realise the force of these general considerations in order to understand the policy of the High King who sat on the throne of Ireland throughout the whole period of Patrick’s work in the island. Loigaire had succeeded about five years before Patrick’s arrival (A.D. 428). He was son of King Niall, who had been slain in Britain, perhaps in the very year in which Patrick had been carried into captivity. Niall’s immediate successor was his nephew, Dathi, who reigned for twenty-three years, and likewise found death beyond the sea.[84] But Dathi, it would seem, went forth as a friend, not as a foe, of Rome. He led a host to help the Roman general Aetius to drive back the Franks from the frontiers of eastern Gaul, and he was struck by lightning. The expedition of Dathi has an interest not only from the Irish, but also from the Roman point of view. It illustrates the wide view of Aetius. It shows us how he looked to all quarters for mercenary help; if he relied on the Huns, whom he was hereafter to smite so hard, he also invited auxiliaries from Scottia. From the Irish side, it illustrates the fact that Ireland was within the Roman horizon.