112 Mr. Petrie on the History and Antiquities of Tar a Hill. 



The dates in the oldest documents, — the lives in the Book of Armagh, — appear 

 to agree with those to which the death of Sen-Patrick is referred by the an- 

 nalists. The life by Maccuthenius is, indeed, silent on this head, but, as it states 

 that the saint was one hundred and twenty years of age when he died, and as a 

 similar statement is made in the life by Tirechan, in which the death of Patrick 

 is placed two or five years before the death of Laoghaire, — that is, according to 

 the chronology of the Irish Annals, in 458 or 461, — it may be concluded that 

 both biographers concur on this point ; and it is remarkable that Giraldus Cam- 

 brensis also places the death of Patrick the Apostle in 458. It has, however, 

 been already shewn that these are the dates assigned by the Irish annalists to 

 the death of the first or Sen- Patrick ; and that these dates must refer to him is 

 obvious, as, if they belonged to the Patrick who came in 432, it would contradict 

 the statement in all the lives, that he was sixty years preaching in Ireland. 



But the Irish annalists, as well as a crowd of foreign writers, place the death 

 of Patrick, the Archbishop and Apostle of the Irish, in 491, 492, or 493. Thus 

 the entry in Tighearnach, which has been copied by most of the subsequent 

 annalists, quotes an ancient Irish quatrain as authority for the date 493 : 



" A. D. 493. Patricius ArcMepiscopus et .Apostolus Hibernensium anno etatis sue cente- 

 simo •oigesimo, xvi. Kal. April, quievit. 



" O jenemam Cpifc, ceim aic, From the birth of Christ, a pleasant period, 



Cerpe ceo pop caem nocaio Four hundred above fair ninety, 



Ceopa bliaoain paep lap pern Three noble years after that 



Co bap pcropaic ppim appcail." To the death of Patrick, chief Apostle. 



This quatrain is also quoted by the Four Masters, and in all the copies of 

 the Chronicon Scotorum preserved in Dublin, and most correctly in Duald Mac 

 Firbis's copy of that work, preserved in the MS. Library of Trinity College, 

 Dublin, which is here given with Colgan's translation, Trias Thaum. p. 234 : 



« O jenap Cpipc, — aipearh aic, A nato Christo (calculando recte), 



Cerpe c^oo pop caoninocaic Quadringenti cum nonaginta, 



Ceopa bliaona beacc lap pin Et tribus annis insuper, 



^o bap paopaij ppiom Qppail. Usque ad mortem Patricii, praecipui Apostoli nostri." 



And thus, if this passage be not an interpolation, which is not very probable, 

 it would appear that Tighearnach understood this Patrick, the Archbishop and 

 Apostle, as a different person from an earlier Patrick, whose birth, captivity, and 

 ^eath he had before recorded. But still the accuracy of this date will be apt to 



