8 
the Saint for Kilpatrick near Dumbarton on the Clyde; some for 
the S.W. parts of Wales, about St. David’s ; some for Brittany and 
the north of Gaul. I am not aware that anyone has, until very 
lately, claimed St. Patrick as a Cumbrian. Yet this is what I am 
prepared to do. The probabilities of the evidence seem to me to 
point to some part of the British coast south of the Great Wall of 
Hadrian, i.e., to some part of the modern county of Cumberland, 
as the true locality of St. Patrick’s birth.* 
May I express the hope that the subject under discussion will 
not be found too dry for a popular lecture? ‘There are surely 
elements of general interest even about an archzological question 
like this. It will be something if we can add St. Patrick to the 
not very long list of worthies whom Cumberland has so far pro- 
duced. And even if we fail in this effort, we may still find incidental 
points of interest to compensate us for our trouble. Toa cultivated 
mind there is always a pleasure in realizing in imagination the 
conditions and appearance, ages ago, of the countryside with which 
we are now familiar. It has been well said that ‘‘ whatever helps 
men to realize the past, the distant, or the eternal over the tempo- 
rary and the present, advances them in the dignity of thinking 
beings.” And if get nothing more from our inquiry than a clearer 
picture of what West Cumberland, with its towns and people, was 
like fifteen hundred years ago, we shall not have had our labour in 
vain. 
A word or two must be premised as to the authorities for the 
facts of St. Patrick’s history. ‘There are several very early lives of 
the Saint. But more important are two documents which profess 
to be his own genuine writings. One of these is an Epistle to 
Coroticus, a British prince of some part of South Wales. The 
other is called the “Confession of St. Patrick,” and is a kind of 
autobiography, something in the style of the more famous Con- 
*This suggestion has been already made by Sir W. Butler in the first number 
of ‘‘Merry England,” May 1882. From the obvious similarity between 
Banaven and Whitehaven, Col. Butler ascribes the honour to this latter town. 
Whilst agreeing cordially with his main conclusion, I believe that a closer 
acquaintance with the archzeology of the locality shows the improbability of 
Whitehaven being the Banaven of St. Patrick’s Confession. 
