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Updated: June 8, 2025
According to the account now generally accepted he was born about the year 390, though as this would make him well over a hundred at the time of his death, perhaps 400 would be the safest date; was a native, not as formerly believed of Gaul, but of Dumbarton upon the Clyde, whence he got carried off to Ireland in a filibustering raid, became the slave of one Milcho, an inferior chieftain, and herded his master's sheep upon the Slemish mountains in Antrim.
And Patrick, being filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, answered unto Milcho: "The fire which thou sawest to issue from me is the faith of the Holy Trinity, with which I am entirely illumined, and which I shall endeavor to preach unto thee; but my speech will find in thee no place, for thou wilt, in the blindness of thine heart, repel from thee the light of the divine grace, and thou wilt die in the darkness of thy unbelief; but thy daughters shall at my preaching believe in the true God, and, all the days of their lives serving God in holiness and in justice, shall, in a pious end, rest in the Lord; and their ashes, that is, their relics, the Lord revealing them and making of them signs, shall be carried into many places through Ireland, and shall give the blessing of health to many who are infirm; and thy dream is true, and its interpretation is true, and all shall be fulfilled in due time."
Running down the coast to Antrim, with which he was personally familiar, he made some stay at Saul, in Down, where he made few converts, and celebrated Mass in a barn; proceeding northward he found himself rejected with scorn by his old master, Milcho, of Slemish.
Augustine, 'Credo quia impossibile. Nature did not form him to be an unbeliever; unbelief is alien to his mind and contrary to his feelings." Here, only a few miles away, is the Slemish mountain where St. Patrick, then a captive of the rich cattle-owner Milcho, herded his sheep and swine. Here, when his flocks were sleeping, he poured out his prayers, a Christian voice in Pagan darkness.
The second poem in the series, "The Disbelief of Milcho," especially is one of great beauty, full of wild poetic gleams, and touches which breathe the very breath of an Irish landscape. Poetry is indeed the medium best suited for the Patrician history.
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