Sliabh Mis

A steep, lonely hill of dark rock above the Braid valley, a few miles east of Ballymena: the plug of an extinct volcano, the hard core left standing when the cone around it wore away. In his Confession Patrick says that he was carried to Ireland as a captive at about sixteen, that he tended flocks there every day, and that he prayed in the woods and on the mountain, rising before dawn through snow, frost and rain, until after six years a voice told him that his ship was ready. He never says where. Muirchú, writing his Life of Patrick in the seventh century, puts the captivity here, with a master named Miliucc; others look for it in Mayo, by the Wood of Foclut near the western sea, which Patrick names himself. On St Patrick’s Day crowds climb to the top.