The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-03-17

ITS Saint Patrick, benign patron of Ire
 land, merely myth? or aid ne X really live and work in the fifth cen- tury?
 Was he an Irishman?
 An Italian?
 Some accounts place his native town in France.
 The welsh have claimed him as Pad rig"
 What was his nationality, if he lived at all?
 Did he reach the great age of Moses, 12O years, as some traditions assert?
 Did he even live to be 132, as certain early writers maintained?
 How much fact have we to go on?
 What do we really know about Saint Patrick?
 Until lately there had been no strictly scientific and critical examination of the records connected with Saint Patrick. For years scholars were inclined to regard him as a myth altogether, or at best an imaginary parsonage based upon some forgotten real person of his time, an santa Claus is based on an early bishop, Saint Nicholas (the patron saint of thieves, by the way). There are numerous documents existing in Saint Patrick's case But scho,ars long suspected the more important fof heinz forgeries. And when Patrick undertook to convert Ireland to Christian ity he selected a land that has never had fits peer in the world for the making Of myth. tradition and fairy stories gen. orally. In the nearly 15G0 years that have passed since the supposed date or ms death. innumerable tales have grown up around his personality.
 That concerning the expulsion of reptiles is most famous. Tt is well known 10 the whole world (says an old writer) that Saint Patrick did so free Ireland or all yenomous beasts that none could ever since breed or live there, and that even the very wood has a virtue against poison so that it is reported of King college, Cambridge, that being built or Irish wood, no spider doth ever come near it."
 Rut this was comparatively an easy feat beside some of the miracles tradition mas attributed to Patrick. For instance, he was in the habit of stopping to erect a cross over the grave of every Christian buried outside burying ground. One day. coming to two new graves, only one of which had q cross, he spoke to the man below and asked what his religion was. The dead man replied that he had been a pagan, but the unmarked grave held a Christian-the cross had been put over his own by error. So the good saint changed the cross and went on. He was said to have built fire of Ice; to nave driven fish from river when fishermen refused him food; to have consecrated stone and made 1t float off with leper; to have gone dry through rainstorms; to have sailed against wind and stream; to have raised the dead, and many other wonderful things. Once while in captiv- stv. he was sold for kettle, and his former master placed the utensil on the Ire Rut the hotter the blaze, the colder the kettle became, until Patrick was traded back. Then it boiled once more.
 The only defect of these stories IS that they are not true. Otherwise, much more entertaining life of Saint Patrick can be compiled from them than from the authentic documents about him. But these stories, in almost identical form, have been fastened to all the saints and heroes of antiquity They relate the stock things that every saint was supposed to perform. good deal of scholarly research has ~acentlv been given to Saint Patrick, however. by both British and German a,,tborities, and it is now admitted that the chief documents concerning him are ganuine. and that he really lived and carried on in Ireland work such as