Liam Nolan tells the story of …

 

THE SLAVE SHEEP HERDER WHO BECAME
SAINT PATRICK, THE APOSTLE OF IRELAND

 

A nun, a member of the Sisters of Mercy, was the first person to mention Saint Patrick to our Junior Infants pre-First Communion class in the convent school. She spoke of him in the context of a hymn she was about to teach us – Hail Glorious Saint Patrick. It was sung all over Ireland, and yearly in many other counties on Saint Patrick’s Day.

“You’ve all heard of Saint Patrick’s Day, haven’t you, boys?” Sister Eucharia said.
“Yes, Sister.”

Miming, she put a cupped hand to where her right ear was covered behind her shiny white wimple.

“I can’t hear you,” she said in mock surprise. She repeated, “You’ve all heard of Saint Patrick’s Day, haven’t you?”
We all yelled shrilly, “Yes, Sister!”
“That’s better. Who can tell me the date of it?”
“The seventeenth of March,” the class smartypants piped up.
“Good boy, Benny,” the nun said.

She went on then to tell us that a woman born in Cobh, and who later became a nun in Charleville’s Mercy Convent, composed the hymn.
“Saint Patrick was a great and famous man,” Sister Eucharia said. “He brought Christianity to Ireland. We love him here, and the world loves him.”
Hail, Glorious Saint Patrick, dear saint of our isle,
On us thy poor children bestow a sweet smile,
And now thou art high in the mansions above
On Erin’s green valleys look down in they love.

Born in Roman Britain, his original name wasn’t Patrick at all – that came later. His birth name was Maewyn Succat. His father’s name was Calpurnia, a tax collector. His mother’s name was Conchessa. Maewyn admitted that as a youth he himself was idle and callow.
Irish raiders (possibly pirates) captured him at the age of sixteen and took him back to Ireland to sell as a slave.

He spent the next six years in brutal slavery, fearful, homesick, cold and lonely, often mired in despair on the high hills and mountainsides. The language the Irish spoke was meaningless to him as he struggled to learn it.

After six years of suffering, Maewyn Succat escaped and got back to Britain where he became attracted to the Christian faith. That changed the course of his life. He started to think about it seriously.

Continue reading in this week’d Ireland’s Own