St Patrick: From lonely slave to revolutionary religious figure
Parades, Irish bars, music and festivity are the hallmarks of a modern St Patrick’s Day. But who was St. Patrick, the missionary, a man energised by a profound zeal to spread the gospel, making Ireland the centre from which Christianity then spread throughout Europe? His legacy is felt to this day, at home and around the world. Ireland for the ancients truly became the land of the Saints and Scholars.
The old Roman Empire whose tentacles of power had reached across Europe and into Britain was crumbling by the 5th century AD. Raiders sailed over the Irish sea to kidnap Welsh and English victims to sell as slaves when they returned to Ireland. It is disputed as to whether Patrick, later St Patrick was English or Welsh, but regardless, the teenager fell prey to ruthless individuals whom today we would refer to as people traffickers. One day, while walking in a coastal area, the slip of a 16-year-old came face-to-face with a marauding band of raiders who abducted him.
Nasty predicament
Patrick's family were Christian, although he did not bother with religion too much as a teenager himself. His father was said to be a deacon, and his grandfather, a priest in the early church of their homeland. When kidnapped, the situation for Patrick was dire at first. He did not speak the language of the Irish and then he was sold as a slave to tend and keep watch over a slave-lord's flock who under his careful watch staved off attacks by wolves.
Patrick’s Christian upbringing strongly came back to him as he spent long days on Irish hills in prayer, through frost, snow and storms and he never ceased to call on his God. A lesser mortal might have given up on the awful situation, but not Patrick.
Then one night he had a dream, later recording in his Confession, that ‘God spoke to him'. Following the vision, he got up and left his slave-lord and took a 200 mile walkabout to a place he saw in the dream, which turned out to be Wexford. At Wexford, he spotted a boat seen in his dream and asked the owner if he could go with them. But with no money, he was told not on your nelly! The story goes that Patrick prayed at the water's edge and the boat owner, seeing him, then had a change of heart and asked Patrick to join them, but not before he took part in a non-Christian ritual. He refused to do what he was asked, and not having offended his conscience, they still allowed him aboard the vessel with their full approval. The boat sailed towards Britain and Patrick found his family whom he stayed with for a period of time.
Back home, Patrick had another vision, this time of a man bringing him thousands of parchments, and on one of the letters he saw the words, 'voice of the Irish', and he heard the call of the Irish people ‘all as one’ as he read on, 'we employ you holy boy to come and live with us.'
Patrick trained for the Christian priesthood and after 20 years he again set foot in Ireland. Patrick’s passionate preaching and love for the Irish people soon meant that the old ways of the druids were swept aside and replaced by the new practices of the Christian Church. Ireland would never be the same again; its Celtic heritage passing into the mists of time.
St Patrick and Cavan
St Patrick’s journey brought him to every part of Ireland, including the territory nowadays called Cavan, where he interrupted the deadly rituals of Magh Sleacht in the West; to defeating the cailleach geargan near Bailieborough in the East. He visited sites upon which churches named after him were later built, like the former church at Drumgoon Hill, Cootehill. The county has many wells dedicated to the saint; water being an important element in baptism, and from where holy wells poured forth healing, for example, St Patrick’s well inside the remains of St Patrick's Church at the ancient graveyard of Moybologue.
In Castletara, St Patrick's Well, Carrickateane, lies a few yards off the road leaving Cavan for Cootehill, and according to the Irish Folklore Commission it was renowned 'for curing sore eyes'. In the townland of Drumacleesskin, in the Parish of Drung, the Folklore Commission mentioned a well dedicated to St Patrick where Daniel Riley washed and cured his aching feet. St Patrick's name is also honoured in the schools, colleges and universities named after him.
St Patrick in the Caribbean
Each March 17th, a global phenomenon is observed everywhere from Cavan to the Caribbean. Even in the United States the President has an audience with Ireland's Taoiseach. It is an auspicious occasion for Ireland and the diaspora. Then, in the Caribbean, there are the St Patrick's Day commemorations in Kinsale, Montserrat.
Around 2000, the island of Montserrat was rebranded internationally as the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean where St Patrick's Day is a slightly different but very important festival. Most of the inhabitants in Montserrat are descendants of Irish indentured slaves from the days of Oliver Cromwell. An early census of the island, showed most of the inhabitants as Irish, living alongside African slaves, English and others. The unfortunate Irish and African slaves must have identified with St Patrick who was once a slave too.
In Montserrat, St Patrick's Day is a remembrance of its Irish heritage and a failed rising instigated by Afro-Caribbean slaves on March 17, 1768, when 19 slaves were executed. Some of the slave masters were Irish themselves and the slaves thought that St Patrick's Day was a good time to plan the attack because many of the islanders would be drunk. An Irish woman overheard the plans, and their masters were armed and ready.
Since 1985, March 17 has been an official holiday for the islanders, in honour of their African and Irish heritage. Festivities take the form of a 10-day programme of parades, lectures and cultural activities. Montserrat loves its Irish heritage and just as in Ireland you will be sure to get a great Céad Míle Fáilte.
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