Snakes in Ireland. 
299 
attributed this absence of noxious creatures to St. Patrick 
and other saints— 
“history asserts, with more probability,'that from the earliest ages, 
and long before the island was favoured with the light of revealed 
truth, this was one of the things which never existed here, from some 
natural deficiency in the produce of the island.” (Typography of 
Ireland , 1187, p. 48, ed. Wright, 1863.) 
To the notion that nothing venomous could exist in 
Ireland, England is, according to Cambrensis, indebted 
for the possession of the Isle of Man. This island is 
situate midway between Britain and Ireland:—- 
“ Which country it rightly belonged to was a matter of great doubt 
among the ancients: but the controversy was settled in this way; 
since the island allowed venomous reptiles, brought over for the sake 
of experiment, to exist in it, it was agreed by common consent that it 
belonged to Britain.” (Page 70.) 
Much time and bloodshed might have been saved if 
such a delightfully simple method of proving the right of 
possession had been elsewhere adopted. 
Even the soil of Ireland was supposed to be antago- 
nistic to snakes. Andrew Boorde, in his Introduction of 
Knowledge, written 1542, tells us that “ marchauntes of 
England do fetch of the erth of Irlonde to caste in 
their gardens, to kepe out and to kyll venimous wormes ” 
(p. 133, Early English Text Society, 1870). More recently 
this antipathy of serpents to everything Irish was turned 
to good account; Paul Hentzner, in his account of a 
journey to England, 1598, describes a visit to the Houses 
of Parliament at Westminster, and records:— 
“ In the chamber where the Parliament is usually held, the seats and 
wainscot are made of wood, the growth of Ireland; said to have had 
that occult quality, that all poisonous animals are driven away by it: 
and it is affirmed for certain, that in Ireland there are neither serpents, 
toads, nor any other venomous creature to be found.” (.Dodslefs Fugi¬ 
tive Pieces, vol. ii. p. 244.) 
Allusions to this expulsion of reptiles from Ireland 
