"was foamy with the hostile oars of the
Irish." Niall of the Nine Hostages was high king of Tara; and
he was all for a life on the ocean wave and a home on the rolling
deep. He raided the coasts of Britain annually, and any other
coasts that came handy, carrying off captives where he might.
One of these was a boy named Sucat, from Glamorgan: probably
from Glamorgan, though it might have been from anywhere between
the Clyde and the Loire. In time this Sucat escaped from his
Irish slavery, entered the Church, took the Latin name of
Patrick, and made it his business to Christianize Ireland. That
was about the time when the Britons were throwing off the Roman
yoke. He was at the height of his career in the middle of the
fifth century.

Even if he did not make a clean and bloodless sweep of the whole
country, Patrick was one of the most successful Christian
missionaries that ever preached. There was some opposition by
the druids, but it was not successful. He went to the courts of
the kings, and converted them; and to say you had baptized a
king, was as good as to say you had his whole clan captured; for
it was a fractious unnatural clansman who would not go where his
chieftain led. We are in an atmosphere altogether different from
the rancor and fanaticism of the continent. Patrick,--there must
have been something very winning and kindly about the man,--
roused no tradition of animosity. He never made Ireland hate her
pagan past. When the Great Age came,--which was not till later,
--not till the Crest-Wave had passed from Wales,--and Christian
Irishmen took to writing down the old legends and stories, they
were very tender to the memories of the Gods and heroes. It was
in pity for the Children of Lir, that were turned into swans,
that they were kept alive long enough to be baptized and sent to
heaven. Can you fancy Latona and her children so received by
Greekish or Latin monks into the Communion of Saints? But the
Irish Church was always finding excuses for the salvation of the
great figures of old. Some saint called up Cuculain from hell,
converted him, and gave him a free pass that Peter at the Gates
should honor. There was Conchobar MacNessa again. He was king
of Ulster in the days of the Red Branch, the grand heroic cycle
of Irish legend; Cuculain was the chief of his warriors. A
brain-ball was driven through the skull of Conchobar from a
sling; but sure, his druid doctors would never be phased by