An Chraobh Airgid

Person

Saint Patrick

Pádraig · Old Irish Pátraic

Ireland’s patron saint, and in the later tales the last listener of the Fianna.

Open it on the full site There every name opens, and a web shows who is kin to whom.

A fifth-century Romano-British missionary and bishop in Ireland, whose own Latin Confession still survives, he became its patron saint. Carried to Ireland as a captive at about sixteen, he herded flocks there for six years before he escaped; Muirchú’s Life of Patrick, of the seventh century, puts his captivity at Sliabh Mis, Slemish in Antrim. In the Acallam na Senórach, written about 1200, Caílte comes to him at Druim Derg, and the last of the Fianna go about Ireland with him telling the story of every hill. In the Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth, Oisín tells him how he went to Tír na nÓg, and asks him for bread. In the tales Lady Gregory gathered in 1904 the two of them argue: Patrick says Fionn is in bonds in hell, and Oisín says that “the cry of the hounds was better to me than the noise of your schools”.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

  • The Colloquy of the Ancients The last two of the Fianna part in tears. One goes into a hill to his mother; the other finds Patrick blessing Fionn’s old fort, and tells him the story of every hill.
  • Fionn and the Burning of Tara For twenty-three years a man of the sídhe has played Tara to sleep at Samhain and burned it. Then a boy of ten, an outlaw, offers to keep it till morning.
  • Oisín in Tír na nÓg Niamh of the Golden Head carries Fionn’s son away to the Land of the Young. Three hundred years go by like three, and then he asks to go home.

See also

  • Ard Mhacha Armagh. Where Diurán laid the silver from the net on the altar.
  • Eilean Arainn The Isle of Arran. The island of many stags, where the Fianna had the best hunting they ever had.
  • Fionn mac Cumhaill Leader of the Fianna: poet, hunter and seer. In later folklore, a giant.
  • Sliabh Mis Slemish. A lone volcanic hill, where tradition says the young Patrick herded his master’s flocks.

Sources

Medieval manuscript. Written down by Irish scholars between the eighth and seventeenth centuries.

Each tale above lists the sources it is retold from. Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.