40 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy . 



Colgan's " Tei'tia "Vita "^ has a short notice of St. Patrick's visit to Magh 

 Sleacht. The "Quarta Vita,"^ too, relates the incidents of the occasion, and with 

 greater detail. The writers, as well as the so-called " Evinus," ^ who com- 

 posed the " Tripartite Life," were dependent for their materials on common 

 sources, the chief of which was undoubtedly the Memoir of Tirechan. Yet 

 the Memoir, as it has reached us, connects St. Patrick with Magh Sleacht only 

 by one scanty allusion. As the authors of the three several " Lives " cannot be 

 supposed to have independently invented the same story, it must be inferred 

 that the original manuscript of Tirechan described the famous visitation, but 

 that, from motives which are easy to understand, some early monk-tran- 

 scriber excised, or omitted, the Magh Sleacht passages.* 



Fortunately the objectionable matter was not cut out quite clean ; and 

 the short sentence that escaped deletion is of great present value. It says : 

 " Mittens autem Patricius methbrain ad fossam Slecht barbarum Patricii pro- 

 pinquum qui dicebat mirabilia in Deo vera." ° The Latin/ossa in place-names, 

 such as that here given, means a rath'' ; and the equivalence is recognized by 

 Bury, who translates " fossam Sleacht " as Eath Slecht.' Where are we to 

 look for this Eath Slecht ? Not surely on top of Darraugh Hill, for the rath 

 there shows no sign of having ever been a fortified rampart. Next to the 

 ceremonial enclosure on Darraugh, the largest fort of Magh Slecht laid down 

 in the earlier Ordnance maps is the double-ringed rath surrounding the old 

 chapel and churchyard of Kilnavart." I can see no reason for doubting that 

 this was the identical fossa Slecht to which Patrick despatched Methbrain. 

 This relation of the saint, born somewhere outside the Eoman dominions, 

 had for his commission, as explained in the Tripartite Life, the pastoral 

 charge of Domnach Maighe Slecht, that is, of the church which Patrick 

 founded " in that stead." 



1 " Trias Thaumaturga," p. 25. 



'^Ibid., p. 42. 



^Ihid., p. 117. 



* "There is reason to suppose that an account of the visit has fallen out of Tirechan's 

 text" (Bury's " Life of St. Patrick," p. 306). Professor Bury discusses the matter fully 

 in Proc. R.I. A., vol. xxiv, Sect. C, pt. 3 ("Itinerary of Patrick in Connaught"), 

 pp. 154-6. 



6 "Book of Armagh " (edited by Dr. Gwynn), folio 11, p. 21. 



"Hogan's " Onom. Goedel.," p. 430. 



' " Itinerary of Patrick in Connaught " (Proc. R.I. A., vol. xxiv), p. 155. 



^ This double rath is shown on the earliest Ordnance maps, and it stood intact until 

 the building of the modern church in 1864. The rath fences were then demolished, for 

 about a third of their circumference, along the front, or road side ; the arc being 

 replaced by a low stone wall, with a central iron gate. In from the road the ancient 

 circuuivallation remains in siin. 



