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The Rev. J. H. Todd, D. D., read a paper on the name 
said to have been given to St. Patrick, when a captive in Ire- 
land, by his heathen masters; a name which the biographers 
of the saint have endeavoured to interpret, without any very 
satisfactory result. 
It appears that the father and mother of St. Patrick had 
taken him and his sisters to visit their relations in Armorica. 
Whilst they were there, a party of British (that is, as appears 
from the story, North British) made an inroad upon the 
country, slew the parents of St. Patrick, and carried him and 
his sisters away with them as captives. The pirates landed 
in the north of Ireland, where they sold Patrick as a slave to 
Milcho, or Miliue, a chieftain of Dalaradia,* by whom we are 
told he was named Cothraighe. 
This name has greatly puzzled the authors of the lives of 
St. Patrick, who all derive it from the Irish cethair, which is 
the Latin guatuor; and to explain it on the assumption of this 
etymology, they tell us that Miliuc was one of four, who had 
jointly purchased St. Patrick, and that the name was given 
him because he had become the servant of four masters. 
Thus Fiech, Bishop of Sletty, in the ancient metrical life of 
St. Patrick which stands first in Colgan’s collection, says,— 
“bacap ile Cotpalge 
Ceatan cnebe dia pognao.” 
Which Colgan translates thus :— 
‘“Tdeo vocatus Cothraighe, quia quatuor familiis inserviebat.” 
It will be observed, however, that this etymology does 
not explain the occurrence of the g in the name Cothraighe : 
for there is no g in ceathair, or quatuor. 
This difficulty seems to have been felt by the author of the 
prose Life, (given by Colgan as his Vita secunda)—who 
latinizes the name Quadriga; and explains it thus: ‘Ipse 
in regione Dalaradiz devectus, a quatuor emptus est; ex 
* Vit. Trip. L, c. 16., Jocel. c. 13. 
