WORK IN MEATH
In another district of Meath, Donagh-Patrick, near the banks of the Blackwater, seems to mark a spot associated with an important success of the apostle. Here Conall, son of Niall, and brother of king Loigaire, had his dwelling, still marked by the foundations of an ancient fort, and he was less deaf than his greater brother to the persuasions of Patrick’s teaching. He submitted to the rite of baptism, and he granted a place, close to his own house, for the building of a church. Patrick measured out the ground, and a church of unusual size arose, twenty yards from end to end, and it was known as the Great Church of Patrick. Such was the scale of the early houses of Christian worship in Ireland.
The conversion of Conall was an important achievement, but it is related that there were other sons of Niall, who were so bitterly adverse to the new doctrine, that they were fain to take the life of its teacher. Not far from the place where he won the friendship of Conall, Patrick had been in danger of his life at the hands of Coirpre, Conall’s brother. At a little distance above the confluence of the Blackwater with the Boyne, the village of Telltown recalls the memory of Taillte,[102] a place of great note and fame in ancient Meath. Here a fair was held and a feast celebrated at the beginning of autumn, and people gathered together to witness the games which were held there, perhaps under the presidency of the High King. The record of the visit of Patrick to Taillte mentions the games as the “royal agon,” and the Greek word sends our thoughts to those more illustrious contests which were held at the same season of the year on the banks of the Alpheus in honour of Zeus. It is not clear whether Patrick is supposed to have timed his visit to see and denounce the heathen usages of the festival. Perhaps he would have avoided such an occasion with the same discretion which Otto, the apostle of the Pomeranians, exercised when he waited outside the town of Pyritz till the pagan folk had finished the celebration of a religious feast.[103] The story is that Coirpre, son of King Niall, wished to put Patrick to death at Taillte, and scourged his servants because they would not betray their master into his hands.
But if the bishop was in danger from a son of Niall at Taillte, he is said to have fared worse at the hands of a grandson of Niall[104] at another place of high repute in the kingdom of Meath. The hill of Uisnech, in south-western Meath, was believed to mark the centre of the island, and was a scene of pagan worship. Patrick visited the hill town, and a stone known as the “stone of Coithrige”—perhaps a sacred stone on which he inscribed a cross—commemorated his name and his visit. The stone has disappeared, but the traveller is reminded of it by the stone enclosure which is known as “St. Patrick’s bed.” While he was there, a grandson of Niall slew some of his foreign companions. Patrick cursed both this man and Coirpre, and foretold that no king should ever spring from their seed, but that their posterity would serve the posterity of their brethren. Tradition consistently represents Patrick as finding in malediction an instrument not to be disdained.
It is recorded that, proceeding from Donagh-Patrick up the Blackwater, he came to the Ford of the Quern,[105] and planted there another Christian settlement. This place was probably near the old town of Kells, then called Cenondae. Unlike Trim, Kells has some traces of the early age of Christian Ireland, though nothing that can claim association with the age of Patrick. The ancient stone house which is preserved there, is connected by tradition with the name of the great saint who a hundred years after Patrick’s death went forth from Ireland to convert north Britain.[106]
Some churches are said to have been established by Patrick in the north-western region of Meath, which was known by a name, now obsolete, as the kingdom of the two Tethbias.[107] The river Ethne, which is now pronounced Inny, flows through this region to contribute its waters to a swelling of the Shannon, and divides it into two parts, the northern and the southern Tethbia. Perhaps the only place here that we have any ground for associating with Patrick is Granard. We are told that from the hill of Granard he pointed out to one of his followers the spot where a church should be founded. This church, Cell Raithin, may have been the origin of the settlement which grew into the town of Granard. Among the inmates of the monastery established here is said to have been one who had a specially interesting connexion with Patrick’s life. Gosact, described as the son of his old master, was, according to the tradition, here ordained a priest by the captive stranger who had once kept his father’s droves. There cannot be any reasonable doubt that the tomb of Gosact was in later times to be seen at Granard,[108] and that the tradition of the place represented him as the son of Miliucc. Nor should we have any good reason to question that Gosact, who was buried there, was a son of Miliucc. But we have seen grounds for believing that the story of Patrick’s servitude under Miliucc of Dalaradia was an error; and it would follow that Gosact, son of Miliucc, was not the son of Patrick’s master. Nevertheless, Gosact may have been connected with the years of bondage, and may perhaps supply us with the clue which we desire for explaining how it came about that it ever occurred to any one to place the scene of the captivity in the land of Miliucc. In the earliest notice of Gosact that is preserved, he is said to have been fostered by Patrick during the servitude of seven years. This suggests the conjecture that, in conformity with a custom which prevailed in Ireland, Miliucc had sent his son from home to be brought up by Patrick’s master in Connaught, and that through this accident, happening at the time of the captivity, Patrick had associated with Gosact. The record of this bond between Patrick and Miliucc’s son might have originated the error that Miliucc was Patrick’s master.
IDOL OF MAG SLECHT
It is said that, having done what he could do towards planting his religion here and there in Tethbia, Patrick bent his steps northward to one of the chief strongholds and sanctuaries of pagan worship in Ireland.[109] In the plain of Slecht, in a region which belonged then to the kingdom of Connaught, but falls now within the province of Ulster, there was a famous idol. It was apparently a stone, covered with silver and gold, standing in a sacred circuit, surrounded by twelve pillar stones. This idol was known as Cenn Cruaich or Crom Cruaich, and it has been suggested that a fossilised memory of the same worship is found in a name among the British Celts beyond the sea, Pennicrucium. We may suspect that either later generations exalted unduly the importance of the precinct in Mag Slecht as a national centre of religion, or that its importance had dwindled before the days of Patrick. It was told in later times that the firstlings, even of human offspring, used to be offered to this idol, in order to secure a plenteous yield of corn and milk, and that the High Kings of Ireland themselves used to come at the beginning of winter to do worship in the plain of Slecht. If the cult in that plain possessed such national significance as was in later times believed, it would have been one of Patrick’s greatest feats if he assaulted and conquered the power of heathendom in one of its chief fastnesses. The story tells, with a simplicity which defeats itself, that he came and struck down the idol with his staff. If this was done, if the golden pillar of the older god was thus cast down by the servant of the new divinity, it must have been done with the consent of secular powers. It would thus have marked, perhaps more than any other single event, the formal success of Christian aggression against the pagan spirit of Ireland, and it would inevitably have stood out in the earliest records as one of the decisive victories, if not the supreme triumph. The blow struck by Patrick at the stone of Mag Slecht would be as the stroke of Boniface at the oak of Geismar. The fall of Cenn Cruaich should be as illustrious in the story of the spreading of Christianity in the island of the Scots as was the fall of the Irmin pillar on a Westphalian hill in the advance of Christendom from the Rhine to the Elbe, under the banner of Charles the Great. The apostle of the Irish might as justly and proudly have sent some fragment of the fallen image to the Roman pontiff, a trophy of the victory of their faith, as in a later age the apostle of the Baltic Slavs sent to Rome the three-headed god which he took from the temple of Stettin to show the head of the Church how a new land was being won for Christ. But the truth is that the episode of Cenn Cruaich, though the incident rests on an ancient tradition, held no prominent place in the oldest records. Perhaps we shall be near the mark if we infer that the story is based on a genuine fact, but that the later accounts impute to it a significance which it did not possess.[110] We may suppose that the worship of the idol was of interest only to the surrounding regions, and had no national import for the whole island. If Patrick went to the place and with the help of secular authority suppressed the worship and cast down the god, it was simply one of his local successes, one of many victories in his struggle with heathenism, not a crowning or typical triumph.