Let us first see what the paganism of the Irish consisted in, and what was their social condition before S. Patrick preached, so that we may be able to realise to some degree what a revolution was effected by the introduction of the Gospel.
The heathen Irish certainly adored idols; one of the principal of these was Cromm Cruaich, which is said to have been the chief idol of Ireland. It is said to have been of gold, and to have been surrounded by twelve lesser idols of stone. To this Cromm Cruaich the Irish were wont to sacrifice their children. There still exists an old poem that mentions this:
“Milk and corn
They sought of him urgently,
For a third of their offspring,
Great was its horror and its wailing.”
Then there were the Side worshipped. We do not know what these were, but it is thought that they were the spirits of ancestors. The sun also received adoration, so did wells. S. Patrick went to the well of Slan, and there he was told that the natives venerated it as a god; it was the King of Waters, and they believed that an old dead faith or prophet lay in it under a great stone that covered the well. S. Patrick moved the slab aside, and so destroyed the sanctity of the well.
There can be no doubt that polygamy existed: Bridget’s father had a wife in addition to Brotseach, her mother; and S. Patrick, like S. Paul, had to insist that those whom he consecrated as bishops should be husbands of one wife.
Women were in low repute; they were required to go into battle and fight along with the men, and it was only on the urgency of Adamnan in the synod of Drumceatt, in 574, that they were exempted. A man could sell his daughter—it was so with Dubtach and Bridget. In the life of S. Illtyt, a Welsh Knight, it is told how one stormy morning, when he wanted to have his strayed horses collected, he pushed his wife out of her bed and sent her without any clothes on to drive the horses together. There is no doubt but the Irish husbands were quite as brutal.
There is a very curious story in the life of S. Patrick. He was desirous of revisiting his old master Miliuc with whom he had been a slave as a lad, and from whom he had run away. His hope was to convert Miliuc, and to propitiate him with a double ransom. But the old heathen, frightened at his approach, and unwilling to receive him and listen to his Gospel, burned himself alive in his house with all his substance. This seems to point to the Indian Dharna having been customary in Ireland.