St. Patrick and the Fishermen. 5. 



The trout and eels, and also pike, 



Were under his decree, sir. 

 And this perhaps may solve a point 



With other learned matters, sir, 

 Why Irishmen still love to fish 



Ever in ' troubl'd waters,' sir." 



In a copy I picked up at an old book- 

 shop of Swift's translation of Jocelin's 

 Life and Acts of Saint Patrick, the Arch- 

 bishop, Primate, and Apostle of Ireland, 

 printed and most beautifully printed in 

 Dublin in 1809, is a copper-plate copy 

 of the three portraits drawn by Father 

 Thomas Messingham, and prefixed to his 

 Florilegium (Paris, 1624). The portraits 

 are of St. Columba, St. Brigida, and St. 

 Patricius. St. Patrick is in the centre, 

 standing on snakes and dragons. Among 

 the miracles attributed to St. Patrick is 

 that of the " river sentenced to perpetual 

 sterility." It appears that the Saint and 

 his companions having landed at the port 

 of Innbherde, in Leinster, where is a 

 river flowing into the sea, which river 

 then abounded with many fishes, the ser- 

 vants of the Saint asked the fishermen, 

 who were drawing their nets full of fish 

 to land, to bestow on them some of their 

 fishes. " But they, barbarous, brutal, and 

 inhuman, answered the entreaty, not only 

 with refusal, but with insult. Whereat 



