The parents of Succat, as has been already said, were Christians, and it would seem that the Gospel had been preached to some extent in the neighborhood of his father's home. Whatever amount, however, of instruction he may have received was rudely interrupted, when he was about sixteen years of age. The coasts of Scotland were at this time exposed to the frequent incursions of Irish chieftains, who landed from their swift barks, ravaged the country, and having carried off as many of the inhabitants as they could, consigned them to slavery. In one of these expeditions the house of Calphurnius was attacked, and Succat, with two of his sisters and many of his countrymen, was carried away and conveyed to the north of Ireland. Here he was purchased as a slave by Michul or Milchu, a chief of North Dalaradia, who dwelt in the valley of the Braid, near Mount Slemish, in the country of Antrim. The work assigned him was that of attending his master's flocks and herds, and in his "Confession," which he wrote toward the close of his life, he describes how he wandered over the bleak mountains, often drenched with the rains, and numbed with the frosts. His period of servitude lasted six years; and during this time he would seem to have made himself acquainted with the language of the native tribes, and to have learned their habits and modes of life. At length he succeeded in effecting his escape to the seaside, where he took ship, and, after a tempestuous passage, regained his father's house. His stay, however, was destined to be very short. In a predatory excursion he was a second time taken captive, and again, after a brief interval, succeeded in making his escape. Had he listened to his parents, he would now have remained with them, but he was bent on a very different occupation. "The Divine Voice," he says, "frequently admonished me to consider whence I derived the wisdom which was in me, who once knew neither the number of my days nor was acquainted with God; and whence I obtained afterward so great and salutary a gift as to know and to love God." During the weary hours, moreover, of his captivity, he had often reflected how blessed a thing it would be if he, to whom it had been given to know the true God and his Son Jesus Christ, could carry the glad tidings to his master's people and the land of his exile. One night, he tells us, he had a dream, in which he thought he saw a man coming from Ireland with a number of letters. One of these he gave him to read, and in the beginning occurred the words, "The voice of the Irish." While he was reading it, he thought he heard a voice calling to him across the Western Sea, "We entreat thee, holy youth, to come and walk among us."