Tracing the clues that lead back to St Patrick's Caerwent birthplace

Terence Sheehy looks around Ireland and Wales in a quest for details of St Patrick IN NORTH County Dublin, in Fingal, the "Land of the Fair Stranger", there is today, a charming local oral tradition concerning Saint Patrick. The good, hard working, hospitable, and wealthy market-gardeners of the parish of Saint Maur, in the town of Rush — it's name in Irish means the peninsular of the yew trees (which provided many a bow for Agincourt) call their neighbours in the town of Skerries. the "skin the goats". In retaliation, the jaunty yachtsmen and golfers of Skerries called the people of Rush the "Ray eaters".
This description is said to reflect on the humble deep-sea faring origins of the Rush folk, who used to fish, at the turn of the century, off the coast of Newfoundland, and lived largely on a modest diet of dried salted and stored Ray-fish, nailed up in the rafters.
The "skin the goats" are so named because of the following historical incident. Saint Patrick and his disciples sailed up the East coast of Ireland, slipped in between Lambay Island, with its basking seals, and the sandy strand of Rush, and landed on what is still known on the map today as "Saint Patrick's Island", adjacent to Colt Island. and Shenick's Island, just off Skerries. While they were ashore, seeking supplies of fresh water, the unbaptised Celtic inhabitants of Skerries stole the National Apostle's goat, skinned it, and ate it.
Such is the strength of this oral tradition that the architect of the parish church of this century, set up a statue of Saint Patrick at the entrance doors to the chapel, and, at the feet of the statue, had carved a little goat. The goat was
• Left: Statue of St Patrick on Sliabh Padraig, Saul, Co Down.
soon chiselled clean off, at the insistence of the (by now baptised) local parishioners. Saint Patrick, despite much folk-lore, myth. and the many studies of him by the various members of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, set up by Eamon de Valera, and sometimes referred to as "the Bored of Higher Studies", is, in fact, an historical figure of the stature of Saint Paul. His two historically authentic documents on which
his existence stands fair -1 square, are his "confession" and his "Letter of Coroticus".
Copies of both are in the Book of Armagh. in the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, in Dublin, written in A.D. 807.
Patrick was a West Briton, a citizen of Rome, a Christian, who wrote and spoke in a rough Latin, and was also an Irish speaker. He was born in Britain, in about the year A.D. 389, and he was captured by raiding Irish slave traders, when he was about 16. He was sold into pagan .slavery, and served as a shepherd on the slopes of Slemish in County Antrim, from which he escaped after some six years. He returned to Ireland as a mis sionary bishop in A.D. 432, and achieved the superhuman task of converting the pagan Irish to the one true faith, and died, exhausted by his labours in A.D. 461.
His actual bithplace is still the subject of much historical debate, but, using the jig-saw puzzle of clues in his "Confession", my own view is that he was born in the Roman City of Caerwent, not far distant from the River Severn. The Irish pirate fleet probably raided up the Severn, and abducted him along with many thousands of other young people. A visit to the Roman city of Caerwent today reveals a city of the size and nature which is described by Patrick in his "Confession", as being his birthplace, and archaeologists have shown that the city did indeed suffer a massive and devastating attack at about the time of Saint Patrick's boyhood abduction.
This West Britain connection would appear to feature also in the "Letter to Coroticus", as this was directed, furiously, against Caredig, the British chieftain, who gave his name to Cardiganshire. Coroticus, a fellow Roman citizen. and Christian, a pirate-chieftain, in a raid on Ireland. massacred and robbed many of Saint Patrick's converts on the very day of their baptism, and sold those not bludgeoned to death, many of them women, into slavery, into the hands of the heathen Franks. The "Letter" is written in the white heat of anger and extreme grief. and reveals much of the character and humanity of Patrick, The real Patrick suffers greatly from an accumulation about him of myth and legend and politicians, and his feast day is celebrated in the most diverse and unusual way. For example, 1 have seen the Chinese community join in paying him tribute in his annual parade in San Francisco. In Montreal. I have seen the Royal Canadian Air Force pay him an exuberant tribute as they flew low over his feast-day procession.
In New York one sees the greatest parade of green on earth. The saluting base is on the steps outside the bronze doors of his splendid Gothic cathedral, built by the dimes of Irish workers, men and women, Prelates and Hibernian politicians vie with each other in being seen on television. and being photographed by the press, as the parade takes hours to pass by. Many marching high school hands, and strutting drum majorettes, now cross the Atlantic every March 17 to take part in the parade in his honour in O'Connell Street, Dublin.
It is all great fun and thousands upon thousands of pilgrims climb his holy mountain, Croagh Patrick, "The Reek" in County Mayo, to hear Mass at dawn on the summit, and thousands fast, bare-foot on his holy island, on Lough Derg, "St Patrick's Purgatory" in County Donegal.
Through the enormous efforts of Irish missionaries in Africa, over the past one hundred years, and more, a multitude of Patricks have been baptised in that dark continent, where many of the Ciboria there are now more full than those in Europe of the faith.
Perhaps, one day. a black Saint Patrick will appear on the scene of a nuclear war devastated Europe. and restore the faith to a few, surviving white native inhabitants, and thus may the Patrician tradition continue. of a Christ-like person, whose like has not passed this way since Saint Paul addressed the Pagan Celts in Athens,