White — Latin Writings of St. Patrick. 



225 



master of the ship, / left them to go to the hut where I was lodging. 

 There is no need to repeat here the details of the narrative. Patrick 

 does not tell us to what nation the sailors belonged. He understood 

 their language and they his, so probably they were Irish or British. 

 He tells us that the reason he stayed with them was his hope that 

 they might become Christians. 



After a voyage of three days they reached land. What was this 

 land ? The heavenly voice had promised, Cito itiirus ad patriam tuam, 

 and so, if we had no other source of information, we sliould naturally 

 suppose that Patrick intended to declare the fulfilment of that promise, 

 and that the land was Britain. The only objection alleged to this is, 

 that in § 23 an interval of a few years seems to be placed between 

 this voyage and his return to Britain : Et iterum post paucos annos in 

 Britannis eram cum parentihus meis. There does not seem to be much 

 force in this objection. The words may mean, " I paid a second visit 

 to Britain, after a few years" ; but in any case the Confessio is not an 

 autobiography; it is only concerned with the facts and visions that 

 connected Patrick with Ireland. He does not tell us where he spent 

 the few years that elapsed between his escape from the sailors and 

 his meeting with his family. But we are anticipating. 



Patrick does not tell us what the sailors had in view in this trip, 

 whether plunder or trade. In any case they do not seem to have 

 landed where they intended, for they had to journey for twenty-eight 

 days before they reached their destination. According to the text of 

 A, the providential encounter with the herd of swine occurred on the 

 eighteenth day of their journey ; according to the other mss., on the 

 fourteenth day. The story is told confusedly. The parenthetical 

 remark, Et iterum post annos multos adhuc capturam dedi, is best explained 

 by a change of feeling towards Patrick on the part of the sailors. His 

 strange behaviour on the night of the feast on pork — shouting Helias — 

 may have determined them to treat him no longer as one of themselves, 

 but as a captive. 



The annos multos will then refer to the time that had elapsed — 

 over six years — since his first captivity. This second period of 

 slavery only lasted two months, when Patrick again made his 

 escape. An interval of a few years now occurs (§ 23), and as they were 

 not spent either in Ireland or Britain, it seems natural to suppose that 

 Patrick escaped to Gaul, and in the shelter of some monastery prepared 

 for Holy Orders. It seems to be implied, further on, that Gaul was the 

 furthest limit of his travels. In § 45 he speaks of his longing to 

 revisit Britain : Non id solum, sed etiam usque ad GaUias uisitare fratres 



