ing our antiquities, is to attribute all such works to the Danes; and to this people the ancient coal-works of Ballycastle, as well as all the other mine excavations throughout Ireland, have been assigned. But the scanty grounds assumed for such a conjecture, and the utter improbability that a people, harassed as were the Danes, and never, at any period, in peaceable possession of the country, should have found time for such slow and laborious operations of peace, has been already by various writers convincingly demonstrated.

Postponing the consideration of some other usages and characteristics of the Pagan Irish to a somewhat later period, when, remaining still unchanged, the materials for illus trating them will be found more ample and authentic, I shall here only advert to one or two points connected with their knowledge of the useful arts and manner of living, respecting which information, however scanty, is to be found in the writings of the ancients. Those who regard Mela as sufficient authority for the barbarous habits of the people, will not, of course, reject his evidence as to the exercise among them of agriculture and grazing:-"The climate of Iverna," says this geographer, "is unfavourable to the ripening of seeds; but so luxuriant in pasture, not only plenteous, but sweet, that the cattle fill themselves in but a small part of the day, and, unless restrained from the pasture, would burst by over-eating."

Another favourite witness of the anti-Irish school, Solinus, thus speaks of the military weapons of the old natives :-"Those among them who study ornament, are in the habit of adorning the hilts of their swords with the teeth of sea-animals, which they burnish to the whiteness of ivory; for the chief glory of those people lies in their arms."+

We have already seen that numbers of swords, made of brass, have been found in different parts of the country; and of these some are averred to be exactly of the same description with the swords found on the field of Cannæ, which are in Sir William Hamilton's collection. Swords similar to these have been discovered also in Cornwall, and Count Caylus has given an engraving of one, of the same kind, which he calls Gladius Hispaniensis, and which came, as it appears, from Herculaneum. It has been thought not improbable that all these weapons, the Irish as well as the others, were of the same Punic or Phoenician origin, and may be traced to those colonies on the coast of Spain which traded anciently with the British isles. There are said to have been likewise discovered some scythe-blades of bronze, such as were attached anciently to the wheels of war chariots; the use of that Asiatic mode of warfare having prevailed formerly, we are told, in Ireland as well as in Britain. That for some parts of their armour, more especially their wicker shields, and bows with short arrows, the Irish were indebted to their Scythic conquerors, the Scots, appears by no means unlikely.{ But the most ancient remains of their weapons are the stone hatchets, and also those heads of arrows¶ and spears, some of flint, and others pointed with bones, the latter resembling those which, for want of iron, were used, as Tacitus tells us, by the ancient Finlanders.**

ardent spirit for mining adventure must have pervaded this country at some very remote period. In many cases, no tradition that can be depended upon now remains of the time or people by whom the greater part of these works were originally commenced." This experienced engineer adds:-"It is worthy of remark, that many of our mining excavations exhibit appearances similar to the surface-workings of the most ancient mines in Cornwall, which are generally attributed to the Phoenicians."-Report to the Royal Dublin Society, on the Metallic Mines of Leinster, in 1828, by Richard Griffith, Esq.

* Iverna est cæli ad maturanda semina iniqui; verum adeo luxuriosa herbis non lætis modo, sed etiam dulcibus, ut se exiguâ parte dici pecora impleant et nisi pabulo prohibeantur, diutibus pasta dissiliant.-De Situ Orbis.

† Qui student cultui dentibus marinarum belluarum insigniunt ensium capulos, candicant enim ad ebur. neam claritatem; nam præcipua viris gloria est in telis.-Solinus, Polyhist.

Meyrick on Ancient Armour, vol. i. One of these scythe-blades of bronze he describes as thirteen inches long.

5 Ware's Antiquities, chap. 2.

"Hammers of stone have been found in the copper-mines of Kerry; heads of arrows, made of flint, are often dug up, and are now esteemed the work of fairies."-Collectan. No. 2.

According to a work quoted by Meyrick, these arrows must have been more ancient than even the time of the Phoenicians. "The inhabitants of Britain and Ireland. previous to their intercourse with the Phonicians, had merely bows, with arrows of reed, headed with flint, or pointed with bones, sharpened to an acute edge." No sooner, however, did the Phoenicians effect an amicable interchange with these islanders, than they communicated to them the art of manufacturing their warlike instruments of metal.-Costume of the Orig. Inhab. of the British Isles.

** Sola in sagittis spes, quas, inopia ferri, ossibus asperant.-German, c. 46.

CHAPTER X.

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO IRELAND.

THE period of Irish history on which we are now about to enter, and of which the mission of St. Patrick forms the principal feature, will be found to exhibit, perhaps, as singular and striking a moral spectacle as any the course of human affairs ever yet presented. A community of fierce and proud tribes, for ever warring among themselves, and wholly secluded from all the rest of the world, with an ancient hierarchy entrenched in its own venerable superstitions, and safe from the weakening infusion of the creeds of Greece or Rome, would seem to present as dark and intractable materials for the formation of a Christian people as any that could be conceived. The result proves, however, the uncertainty of such calculations upon national character, while it affords an example of that ready pliancy, that facility in yielding to new impulses and influences, which, in the Irish character, is found so remarkably combined with a fond adherence to old usages and customs, and with that sort of retrospective imagination which for ever yearns after the past.

While, in all other countries, the introduction of Christianity has been the slow work of time, has been resisted by either government or people, and seldom effected without a lavish effusion of blood; in Ireland, on the contrary, by the influence of one humble but zealous missionary, and with but little previous preparation of the soil by other hands, Christianity burst forth, at the first ray of apostolic light, and, with the sudden ripeness of a northern summer, at once covered the whole land. Kings and princes, when not themselves among the ranks of the converted, saw their sons and daughters joining in the train without a murmur. Chiefs, at variance in all else, agreed in meeting beneath the Christian banner; and the proud Druid and Bard laid their superstitions meekly at the foot of the cross; nor, by a singular blessing of Providence-unexampled, indeed, in the whole history of the church-was there a single drop of blood shed on account of religion, through the entire course of this mild Christian revolution, by which, in the space of a few years, all Ireland was brought tranquilly under the dominion of the Gospel.*

By no methods less gentle and skilful than those which her great Apostle employed, could a triumph so honourable, as well to himself as to his nation of willing converts, have been accomplished. Landing alone, or with but a few humble followers, on their shores, the circumstances attending his first appearance (of which a detailed account shall presently be given) were of a nature strongly to affect the minds of a people of lively and religious imaginations; and the flame, once caught, found fuel in the very superstitions and abuses which it came to consume. Had any attempt been made to assail, or rudely alter, the ancient ceremonies and symbols of their faith, all that prejudice in favour of old institutions, which is so inherent in the nation, would at once have rallied around their primitive creed; and the result would, of course, have been wholly different. But the same policy by which Christianity did not disdain to win her way in more polished countries, was adopted by the first missionaries in Ireland; and the outward forms of past error became the vehicle through which new and vital truths were conveyed.t. The days devoted, from old times, to Pagan festivals, were now transferred to the service of the Christian cause. The feast of Samhin, which had been held annually at the time of the vernal equinox, was found opportunely to coincide with the celebration of Easter; and the fires lighted up by the Pagan Irish, to welcome the summer solstice, were continued afterwards, and even down to the present day, in honour of the eve of St. John.

Giraldus Cambrensis has been guilty of either the bigotry or the stupidity of adducing this bloodless triumph of Christianity among the Irish, as a charge against that people;-Pro Christi ecclesia corona martyri nulla. Non igitur inventus est in partibus istis, qui ecclesiæ surgentis fundamenta sanguinis effusione cementaret: non fuit qui facerit hoc bonem; non fuit useque ad unum."-Topog. Hib. dist. iii. cap. 29.

†The very same policy was recommended by Pope Gregory to Augustin and his fellow-labourers in Eng. land. See his letter to the Abbot Mellitus, in Bede, '(lib. i. c. 30,) where he suggests that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed. "Let the idols that are in them," he says, "be destroyed; let holy water be made, and sprinkled in the said temples; let altars be erected, and relics placed. For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation, not seeing those temples destroyed, may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God, may more willingly resort to the same places they were wont.... For there is no doubt but that it is impossible to retrench all at once from obdurate minds, because he who endeavours to ascend the highest place, rises by degrees or steps, and not by leaps." See Hume's remarks on this policy of the first missionaries, vol. i. chap. I.

With similar views, the early Christians selected, in general, for the festivals of their church, such days as had become hallowed to the Pagans by the celebration of some of their religious solemnities.

At every step, indeed, the transition to a new faith was smoothed by such coincidences or adoptions. The convert saw, in the baptismal font, where he was immersed, the sacred well at which his fathers had worshipped. The Druidical stone on the "high places bore, rudely graved upon it the name of the Redeemer; and it was in general by the side of those ancient pillar towers-whose origin was even then, perhaps, a mystery-that, in order to share in the solemn feelings which they inspired, the Christian temples arose. With the same view, the Sacred Grove was anew consecrated to religion, and the word Dair, or oak, so often combined with the names of churches in Ireland, sufficiently marks the favourite haunts of the idolatry which they superseded.* In some instances, the accustomed objects of former worship were associated, even more intimately, with the new faith; and the order of Druidesses, as well as the idolatry which they practised, seemed to be revived, or rather continued, by the Nuns of St. Bridget, in their inextinguishable fire and miraculous oak at Kildare.t

To what extent Christianity had spread, in Ireland, before the mission of St. Patrick, there are no very accurate means of judging. The boast of Tertullian, that, in his time, a knowledge of the Christian faith had reached those parts of the British isles yet unapproached by the Romans, is supposed to imply as well Ireland as the northern regions of Britain; nor are there wanting writers, who, placing reliance on the assertion of Eusebius, that some of the apostles preached the Gospel in the British isles, suppose St. James the elder to have been the promulgator of the faith among the Irish,-just as St. Paul, on the same hypothesis, is said to have communicated it to the Britons.

But though unfurnished with any direct evidence as to the religious state of the Irish in their own country, we have a proof how early they began to distinguish themselves, on the continent, as Christian scholars and writers, in the persons of Pelagius, the eminent heresiarch, and his able disciple Celestius. That the latter was a Scot, or a native of Ireland, is almost universally admitted; but of Pelagius it is, in general, asserted that he was a Briton, and a monk of Bangor, in Wales. There appears little doubt, however, that this statement is erroneous, and that the monastery to which he belonged was that of Bangor, or rather Banchor, near Carrickfergus. Two of the most learned, indeed, of all the writers, respecting the heresy which bears his name, admit Pelagius, no less than his disciple, to have been a native of Ireland.||

By few of the early Christian heresiarchs was so deep an impression made on their own times, or such abundant fuel for controversy bequeathed to the future, as by this remarkable man, Pelagius, whose opinions had armed against him all the most powerful theologians of his day, and who yet extorted, even from his adversaries, the praise of integrity and talent. The very bitterness with which St. Jerome attacks him, but shows how deeply he felt his power; T while the eulogies so honourably bestowed upon him by his great opponent, St. Augustine, will always be referred to by the lovers of tolerance, as a rare instance of that spirit of fairness and liberality by which the warfare of religious controversy may be softened.**

* Thus Dairmagh, now called Durrogh, in the King's County, once the site of a celebrated monastery, signifies the Oak Grove of the Plain, or the Plain of the Oaks. The name of the ancient monastery, DoireCalgaich, from whence the city of Derry was designated, recalls the memory of the Hill of Oaks, on which it was originally erected; and the chosen seat of St. Bridget, Kildare, was but the Druid's Cell of Oaks con. verted into a Christian temple.

† See Giraldus, Topog. Hibern. dist. ii. cap. 34, 35, 36, 48. The Tales of Giraldus, on this subject, are thus rendered by a learned but fanciful writer, the author of Nimrod:-" St. Bridget is certainly no other than Vesta, or the deity of the fire-worshippers in a female form. The fire of St. Bridget was originally in the keeping of nine virgins; but in the time of Giraldus Cambrensis there were twenty, who used to watch alternate nights: but on the twentieth night, the man whose turn it was merely to throw on the wood, crying, "Bridget, watch thine own fire!"-in the morning the wood was found consumed, but the fire unextinguished. Nor, indeed, (saith Giraldus) hath it ever been extinguished during so many ages since that virgin's time; nor, with such piles of fuel as have been there consumed, did it ever leave ashes. The fire was surrounded by a fence, of form circular, like Vesta's temple- Virgeo orbiculari sepe,'-which no male creature could enter and escape divine vengeance. An archer of the household of Count Richard jumped over St. Bridget's fence, and went mad; and he would blow in the face of whoever he met, saying, Thus did I blow St. Bridget's fire! Another man put his leg through a gap in the fence, and was withered up."—Vol. ii. Britiannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo verò subdita -Lib. adv. Judæos, cap. 7.

§ See the authorities collected on this point by Usher, Eccles. Primord. chap. i. xvi. Vincent de Beauvais thus asserts it:"Nutu Dei Jacobus Hiberniæ oris appulsus verbum Dei prædicavit intrepidus, ubi septem discipulos eligisse fertur."-Speculum Historiale, lib. viii. c. 7. It has been well conjectured by Usher that this story has arisen from a confusion of Hibernia with Hiberia; the latter being one of the names of Spain, which country St. James is said to have visited.

Garnier, in his Dissert. upon Pelagianism, and Vossius, in his Histor. Pelag. The latter says:-" Pelagius professione monachus, natione non Gallus Brito, ut Danæus putavit; nec Anglo-Britannus, ut scripsit Balæus, sed Scotus."-Lib. i. cap. 3.

Among other reflections on the country of Pelagius, St. Jerome throws in his teeth the Irish flummery:— "Nec recordatur stolidissimus et Scotorum pultibus prægravatus."-In Hierem Præfat. lib. i. Upon this, Vossius remarks: Nam per Scotorum pultibus prægravatum, non alium intelligit quam Pelagium natione Scotum."-Lib. i. cap. 3.

**The following are a few of the passages, in which this praise, so creditable to both parties, is conveyed: "Pelagii, viri, ut audio, sanctit et non parvo profectu Christiani."-De Peccat. meritis ac remiss. lib. iii. cap. 1.- Eum qui noverunt loquuntur bonum ac prædicandum virum."-lb. cap. 3. And again, "Vir ille tam egregiè Christianus."

The rank of Celestius, in public repute, though subordinate, of course, to that of his master, was not, in its way, less distinguished. So high was the popular estimate of his talents, that most of the writings circulated under the name of Pelagius, were supposed to have been in reality the production of his disciple's pen. We are told by St Augustine, indeed, that many of the followers of the heresy chose to style themselves, after the latter, Celestians; and St. Jerome, in one of his paroxysms of vituperation, goes so far as to call him "the leader of the whole Pelagian army."*

While yet a youth, and before he had adopted the Pelagian doctrines, Celestius had passed some time in a monastery on the continent, supposed to have been that of St. Martin of Tours, and from thence (A. D. 369) addressed to his parents, in Ireland, three letters, "in the form," as we are told, "of little books," and full of such piety, "as to make them necessary to all who love God. Among his extant works there is mentioned an epistle "On the Knowledge of Divine Law;" which, by some, is conjectured to have been one of those letters addressed by him to his parents. But Vossius has shown, from internal evidence, that this could not have been the case; the epistle in question being, as he says, manifestly tinged with Pelagianism, and therefore to be referred to a later date. The fact of Celestius thus sending letters to Ireland, with an implied persuasion, of course, that they would be read, affords one of those incidental proofs of the art of writing being then known to the Irish, which, combining with other evidence more direct, can leave but little doubt upon the subject. A country that could produce, indeed, before the middle of the fourth century, two such able and distinguished men as Pelagius and Celestius, could hardly have been a novice, at that time, in civilization, however secluded from the rest of Europe she had hiterto remained.

From some phrases of St. Jerome, in one of his abusive attacks on Pelagius, importing that the heresy professed by the latter was common to others of his countrymen, it has been fairly concluded that the opinions in question were not confined to these two Irishinen; but, on the contrary, had even spread to some extent among that people. It is, indeed, probable, that whatever Christians Ireland could boast at this period, were mostly followers of the peculiar tenets of their two celebrated countrymen; and the fact that Pelagianism had, at some early period, found its way into this country, is proved by a letter from the Roman clergy to those of Ireland, in the year 640, wherein, adverting to some indications of a growth of heresy, at that time, they pronounce it to be a revival of the old Pelagian virus.

Already in Britain, where, at the period of which we are treating, Christianity had for more than a century, flourished,|| the tenets of Pelagius had been rapidly gaining ground; and the mission of St. German and Lupus to that country, in the year 429, was for the express purpose of freeing it from the infection of this heresy. Among the persons who accompanied this mission, was the future apostle of Ireland, Patrick, then in his fortysecond year. While thus occupied, the attention of these missionaries would naturally be turned to the state of Christianity in Ireland; and it was, doubtless, the accounts which they gave of the increasing number of Christians, in that country, as well as of the inroads already made upon them by the Pelagian doctrines, that induced pope Celestine to turn his attention to the wants of the Irish, and to appoint a bishop for the superintendence of their infant church. The person chosen for this mission "to the Scots believing in Christ" (for so it is specified by the chronicler¶) was Palladius, a deacon of the Roman church, at whose instance St. German had been sent by the pope to reclaim the erring Britons; and, whatever preachers of the faith, foreign or native, might have appeared previously in Ireland, it seems certain that, before this period, no hierarchy had been there instituted, but that in Palladius, the Irish Christians saw their first bishop. For a short period, success appears to have attended his mission; and a zealous antiPelagian of that day, in his haste to laud the spiritual triumphs of the pope, prematurely

* "Pelagii licet discipulum tamen magistrum et ductorem exercitus."-Epist. ad Ctesiphon "Celestius antequam dogma Pelagianum incurreret, imò adhuc adolescens scripsit ad parentes suos de monasterio epistolasin modum libellorum tres, omni Deum desideranti necessarias."-Gennadius, Catal. Illust Vir. By Dr. O'Connor, this passage of Gennadius has been rather unaccountably brought forward, in proof of the early introduction of monastic institutions into Ireland. "Monachorum instituta toto fere sæculo ante S. Patricii adventum, invecta fuisse in Hiberniam patet ex supra allatis de Celestio, qui ab ipsa adoles centia monasterio se dicavit, ut scribit Genadius." But the mere fact of the Irishman Celestius having been in a monastery on the continent, is assuredly no proof of the introduction of monastic establishments into Ireland. See Prol. i. lxxviii.

Manifestè, Пravel.

Et hoc quoque cognovimus, quod virus Pelagianæ hæreseos apud vos denuo reviviscit.

British bishops had already been present at some continental councils; at that of Arles, in a. D. 314; and at the council of Nice, as is shown to be probable, (Antiq. of Churches, chap. ii.) in the year 325.

"Ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatus a Papa Celestino Palladius primus Épiscopus mittitur."— Prosper. Chron. Bass. et Antioch. Coss.

announced that the new missionary to the British isles, "while endeavouring to keep Britain Catholic, had made Ireland Christian."* The result, however, as regards the latter country, was by no means so prosperous. The few believers Palladius found or succeeded in making during his short stay, could ill protect him against the violence of the numbers who opposed him; and, after some unavailing efforts to obtain a hearing for his doctrine, he was forced to fly from the country, leaving behind him no other memorial of his labours than the adage traditional among the Irish, that "not to Palladius but to Patrick did God grant the conversion of Ireland." This ill-fated missionary did not live to report his failure at Rome; but being driven by a storm on the coast of North Britain, there died, it is said, at Fordun, in the district of Mearns.

Before entering on an account of St. Patrick's mission, a brief sketch of his life, previous to that period, may be deemed requisite. It will be seen that with him, as perhaps with most men who have achieved extraordinary actions, a train of preparation appears to have been laid, from the very outset, for the mighty work he was to accomplish. Respecting his birth-place, there has been much difference of opinion; the prevailing notion being that he was born at Alcluit, now Dunbarton, in North Britain. It is only, however, by a very forced and false construction of some of the evidence on the subject, that any part of Great Britain can be assigned as the birth-place of the Saint; and his own Confession, a work of acknowledged genuineness, proves him to have been a native of the old Gallican, or rather Armoric Britain. The country anciently known by this name comprised the whole of the north-west coasts of Gaul; and in the territory now called Boulogne, St. Patrick, it appears, was born. That it was on the Armorican coast he had been made captive, in his boyhood, all the writers of his life agree; and as it is allowed also by the same authorities that his family was resident there at the time, there arose a difficulty as to the cause of their migration thither from the banks of the Clyde, which the fact, apparent from his own statement, that Armorica was actually the place of his nativity disposes of satisfactorily. His family was, as he informs us, respectable, his father having held the office of Decurio, or municipal senator; though, as it appears, he afterwards entered into holy orders, and was a deacon. From a passage in the Letter of the Saint to Coroticus, it is supposed, and not improbably, that his family may have been of Roman origin; and the opinion that his mother, Conchessa, was a native of some part of the Gauls, is concurred in by all the old Irish writers.

The year of his birth has been likewise a subject of much variance and controversy; but the calculations most to be relied upon assign it to A. D. 387, which, according to his own statement of his having been, at the time when he was made captive, sixteen years of age, brings this latter event to the year 403, a period memorable in Irish history, when the monarch Nial of the Nine Hostages, after laying waste the coasts of Great Britain, extended his ravages to the maritime districts of Gaul.

A. D.

403.

On being carried by his captors to Ireland, the young Patrick was purchased, as a slave, by a man named Milcho, who lived in that part of Dalaradia which is now comprised within the county of Antrim. The occupation assigned to him was the tending of sheep; and his lonely rambles over the mountain and in the forest are described by himself as having been devoted to constant prayer and thought, and to the nursing of those deep devotional feelings which, even at that time, he felt strongly stirring within him. The mountain alluded to by him, as the scene of his meditations, is supposed to have been Sliebhmis, as it is now called, in Antrim. At length, after six years of servitude, the desire of escaping from bondage arose in his heart; a voice in his dreams, he says, told him that he "was soon to go to his own country," and that a ship was ready to convey him. Accordingly, in the seventh year of his slavery, he betook himself to flight, and, making his way to the south-western coast of Ireland, was there

* Et ordinato Scotis episcopo, dum Romanam insulam studet servare Catholicam, fecit etiam Barbaram Christianam.-Prosper. Lib. contra Collat. cap. 41. This sanguine announcement was issued by Prosper, in a work directed against the semi Pelagians, when the true result of Palladius's mission had not yet reached him. With respect to the epithet "barbara," here applied to Ireland, it is well known that whatever country did not form a part of the Roman Empire, was, from ancient custom, so styled.

t Dr. O'Connor, who was of this opinion, takes also for granted that, as a native of Alcluid, or Dunbarton, St. Patrick might have been claimed as Scoto-Irish; Alcluid having been, as he asserts, the seat of the Irish kings in Albany. "Alcluid, Rupes Cludensis, hodie Dunbarton, quæ fuit regia arx regum Hibernorum Albaniæ." He adds:-"Natus est itaque S. Patricius inter Hibernos in præcipuo Hibernorum propugnaculo in Albania." Prol. i. xcviii. This surely, however, is incorrect. The city in question-the Rock of Clyde, as it was called-remained in the hands of the British so late as the days of Bede (1. i. c. 12.;) and it was, therefore, not for many centuries after the time of St. Patrick that it was taken possession of by the Scots.

‡ Patrem habui Calpornium diaconum, filium quondam Potiti presbyteri, qui fuit in vico Bonavem Taber. nie: villulam Enon prope habuit ubi capturam dedi.-Confess. Doctor Lanigan has shown clearly that the place here mentioned, Bonavem, or Bonavem Taberniæ, was in Armoric Gaul, being the same town as Boulogne-sur-Mer in Picardy.-See Eccles. Hist. chap. 2.