§ 2 Legend of Patrick’s Contest With the Druids
THE EASTER LEGEND
The bitter hostility of the Druids and the relations of Loigaire to Patrick were worked up by Irish imagination into a legend which ushers in the saint upon the scene of his work with great spectacular effect. The story represents him as resolving to celebrate the first Easter after his landing in Ireland on the hill of Slane, which rises high above the left bank of the Boyne at about twelve miles from its mouth. On the night of Easter eve he and his companions lit the Paschal fire, and on that self-same night it so chanced that the King of Ireland held a high and solemn festival in his palace at Tara where the kings and nobles of the land gathered together. It was the custom that on that night of the year no fire should be lit until a fire had been kindled with solemn ritual in the royal house. Suddenly the company assembled at Tara saw a light shining across the plain of Breg from the hill of Slane.88 King Loigaire, in surprise and alarm, consulted his magicians, and they said, “O king, unless this fire which you see be quenched this same night, it will never be quenched; and the kindler of it will overcome us all and seduce all the folk of your realm.” And the king replied, “It shall not be, but we will go to see the issue of the matter, and we will put to death those who do such sin against our kingdom.” So he had nine chariots yoked, and, with the queen and his two chief sorcerers and others, he drove through the night over the plain of Breg. And in order to win magic power over them who had kindled the fire, they wheeled lefthandwise, or contrariwise to the sun’s course. And the magicians arranged with the king that he should not go up to the place where the fire was kindled, lest he should afterwards worship the kindler thereof, but that the offender should be summoned to the king’s presence at some distance from the fire, and the magicians should converse with him. So the company dismounted out of range of the fire, and Patrick was summoned. And the sorcerers said, “Let none arise at his coming, for whoever rises will afterwards worship him.” When Patrick came and saw the chariots and horses, he quoted the words of the Psalmist, “Some in chariots and some on horses, but we in the name of the Lord.” One of the company, and one only—his name was Erc—rose up when Patrick appeared, and he was converted and Patrick blessed him (and he was afterwards buried at Slane). Then the sorcerers and Patrick began to converse and dispute; and Lochru, one of the enchanters, uttered strong words against the Christian faith. And Patrick, looking grimly at him, prayed to God that the blasphemer should be flung into the air and dashed to the ground. And so it befell. Lochru was lifted upwards and fell upon a stone, so that his head was dashed in pieces. Then the king was wroth and said, “Lay hands upon the fellow.” And Patrick, seeing the heathen about to attack him, cried in a loud voice, “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered.” Then a great darkness fell and the earth quaked, and in the tumult the heathen fell upon each other, and the horses fled over the plain, and of all that company only the king and queen, and Lucetmael, the other sorcerer, and a few others survived. Then the queen went to Patrick and besought him, saying, “O mighty and just man, do not destroy the king! He will come and kneel and worship your god.” And the king, constrained by fear, bent his knee to Patrick and pretended to worship God. But afterwards he bade Patrick to him, purposing to slay him; but Patrick knew his thoughts, and he went before the king with his eight companions, one of whom was a boy. But as the king counted them, lo! they were no longer there, but he saw in the distance eight deer and a fawn making for the wilds. And the king returned in the morning twilight to Tara, disheartened and ashamed.
MOTIF OF EASTER LEGEND
The framers of this legend had an instinct for scenic effect. The bold and brilliant idea of the first Easter fire flashing defiance across the plain of Meath to the heathen powers of Tara, and the vision of the king with his queen and sorcerers setting forth from their palace in the depth of night with chariots and horses, and careering over the plain, as Ailill and Maeve of pagan story might have suddenly driven in headlong course against the Hound of Ulaid, is a picture not unworthy of the best of those nameless story-makers who in all lands, working one cannot tell where or how, transfigure the facts of history. The calendar is disregarded. The idea is that Easter is to replace Beltane, the Christian to overcome the heathen fire; and it is a matter of no import that the day of Beltane was the first day of summer, which could never fall on Easter Eve.89 But incongruous though the circumstances are, the scene is well conceived to express the triumph of the new faith, and certain general historical facts are embodied, namely, the hostility of the Druids and the personal distaste of the king for the foreign creed.
And the imaginary coincidence of the pagan with the Christian festival has a historical interest of its own. Down to modern times we find the ancient heathen customs of Europe observed in different countries on different days. In some regions they were transferred to Christian feasts like Easter and Pentecost, elsewhere the old heathen days were preserved. When the old practice was adapted to the frame of the new faith, the change was silent and unrecorded, but this Irish legend, by its impossible junction of the two festivals, may be said to embody unconsciously a record of such a change. We can detect here, in the very act as it were, the process by which pagan superstitions which insisted on surviving were sometimes adopted into the Christian calendar.
CONTEST WITH THE DRUID
The story has a sequel which tells how Patrick strove with the other enchanter. On the morrow, that is, Easter day, Loigaire, with kings and princes and nobles, was feasting in his palace, when Patrick with five companions suddenly appeared among them, though the door was shut.90 He came to preach the Word, and the king invited him to sit at meat. Lucetmael, the Druid, in order to prove him, poured a noxious drop into the cup of Patrick, and the saint blessed the cup, and the liquor was frozen to ice, except the drop of poison, which remained liquid, and fell out when the cup was turned upside down. Then he blessed the cup again, and the drink returned into its natural state.
Then the magician said, “Let us work miracles on the plain; let us bring down snow upon the land.” Patrick said, “I will not bring down aught against the will of God.” And the magician by his incantations brought snow waist-high upon the plain. “Now remove it,” said the saint. “I cannot,” said the Druid, “till this hour upon the morrow.” “You can do evil,” answered the saint, “but not good,” and he blessed the plain, and the snow vanished without rain, or mist, or wind. And all applauded and marvelled. Then in the same way the Druid brought darkness down over the plain, but he could not dissipate it, and Patrick dissipated it.
Then said the king, “Dip your books in the water, and we will worship him whose books come out unspoiled.” Patrick was willing to accept this test, but the sorcerer refused on the ground that Patrick worshipped water as a god, meaning its use in baptism. Then the king proposed the same test with fire instead of water; but the Druid said, “No, this man worships fire and water alternately.” But all these parleyings were only preliminary, leading up to the main issue, which is closely connected with the events of the previous night. Patrick proposed an ordeal, which was accepted. His pupil Benignus and the magician were placed in a hut built half of green and half of dry wood. Benignus, clothed in the magician’s garment, was placed in the dry part, and Lucetmael, wearing the garment of Patrick, in the green part. And the hut was set on fire in the presence of all. Then Patrick prayed, and the fire consumed the magician, leaving Patrick’s robe unburnt, but it did not hurt Benignus, though it burnt the magician’s robe from about him. Then Loigaire was fain to kill Patrick, but he was afraid.
BELTANE CUSTOMS
Having discerned that one of the motives of the whole legend is the adoption in the Christian Church, in connexion with the Easter festival, of those fire-customs and sun-charms which were associated throughout Celtic, as throughout Teutonic, Europe with certain days in spring or early summer, we can hardly avoid recognising in this ordeal a memory of the custom of burning a victim on those days. This victim was thought to represent the spirit of vegetation, and its ashes were carried forth and scattered in the fields to make them fruitful. Originally the victim was human, but as time went on, either a mock victim, such as a straw man, was substituted, or he who was chosen to die and decked out for sacrifice was rescued at the brink of the fire. In the Eiffel country, by the Rhine, for instance, the custom was long maintained of heaping brushwood round a tall beech-tree, and forming a framework known as the “burg” or the “hut,” and a straw man was sometimes burned in it.91 We can hardly doubt that the chief ceremonial of the Beltane celebration, the burning of the spirit of growth—whether represented by a man or by a mock man, whether in a dress of leaves or in a framework of green or dry wood—was the motive which suggested the story of this ordeal. In the story the motive has lost its particular significance, and but for its connexion with the opposition between Easter and Beltane might escape detection.
The envelopment of a motive of somewhat the same kind in a setting which purposes to be historical, and in which the motive entirely loses its meaning, has an instructive parallel in the famous story of the funeral pyre of king Croesus. The fundamental motive of that story is the burning of the god Sandan,92 but the incident has been wrought into a historical context so as to disguise its origin, and the tale was largely accepted as literal fact. But Cyrus was as innocent of dooming his defeated foe to a cruel death as Patrick was of burning his Druid rival. In both cases the true victims of the legendary flames were spirits of popular imagination.
The story bears the stamp of an early origin. It is a common fallacy that legends attach themselves to a figure only after a long lapse of time, and that the antiquity of biographies may always be measured by the presence or absence of miracles. The truth is that those men who are destined to become the subjects of myth evoke the mythopoeic instinct in their fellows while they are still alive, or before they are cold in their graves. When once the tale is set rolling it may gather up as time goes on many conventional and insignificant accretions of fiction, and the presence or absence of these may indeed be a guide in determining the age of a document. But the myths which are significant and characteristic are nearly contemporary; they arise within the radius of the personality to which they relate. The tale of Patrick’s first Easter in Ireland and his dealings with the king is eminently a creation of this kind.
In this legend of Patrick’s dealings with the High King there is one implication which harmonises with other records,93 and which, we cannot doubt, reflects, while it distorts, a fact. Patrick visited Loigaire in his palace at Tara, but he went as a guest in peace, not as a hostile magician and a destroyer of life. The position which the Christian creed had won rendered a conference no less desirable for the High King than for the bishop who represented the Church of the Empire. Loigaire agreed to protect Patrick in his own kingdom, though he resisted any attempts that were made to convert him. No cross should be raised over his sepulchre; he should be buried, like his forefathers, standing and accoutred in his arms.
But the place of the Christian communities in the society of Ireland, their rights and obligations, and the modifications of existing customs and laws which the principles and doctrines of their religion demanded, raised questions which could not well be settled except in a general conclave of the kings and chief men of the island. Now it was a custom of the High Kings to hold occasionally a great celebration, called the Feast of Tara, to which the under-kings were invited. It was an opportunity for discussing the common affairs of the realm. Such an occasion is evidently contemplated in the legend, and the Annals record that a Feast of Tara was held towards the close of Loigaire’s reign. It is therefore possible that at such an assembly the religious question was marked as a subject of deliberation, and the bishop was invited to be present. If so, the general issue of the debate must have been that Christian communities were recognised as social units on the same footing as families, but that Christian principles could not alter the general principles of Irish law. This brings us to the chief monument of Loigaire’s reign, the legal code, the construction of which may well have been discussed and resolved on at one of the general assemblages at Tara.