Tírechán (see below, Appendix A, ii. 1) consulted a book which was lent to him by Bishop Ultan of Ardbraccan, and from it he derived a number of details regarding Patrick’s life before he came as a missionary to Ireland. We may refer to this book as the _Liber apud Ultanum_,[245] and its great importance lies in the fact that it is (after the _Confession_) the earliest work bearing on Patrick’s life for which we have a direct testimony. In it Tírechán found Patrick’s four names, and doubtless the summary sketch which he gives of his captivity and travels,[246] and probably the date of his death. This book existed in Ardbraccan in the first half of the seventh century. The account of the captivity in this book depended partly on the _Confession_. The notice of Patrick’s travels on the Continent is as follows:— Uii aliis annis ambulauit et nauigauit in fluctibus et in campistribus locis et in conuallibus montanis _per Gallias atque Italiam totam atque in insolis quae sunt in mari Terreno_, ut ipse dixit in commemoratione laborum. The italicised words are identical with words in the first of the _Dicta Patricii_; and the expression _ut ipse dixit_ permits us to infer that this _Dictum Patricii_ was accepted before the _Liber apud Ultanum_ was written (latest date, first half of seventh century). It has been suggested that the words _in commemoratione laborum_ refer to some lost work of Patrick. Such an assumption is quite unnecessary. The words admit of two other explanations. (1) I formerly suggested[247] that in the _Liber apud Ultanum_ the phrase _commemoratio laborum_ occurred in reference to the autobiographical details in the _Confession_, and that Tírechán, not knowing the _Confession_ at first hand, thought that all the biographical facts furnished by his source were derived from Patrick’s own account. But (2) I now think that the words _ut ipse ... laborum_, “as he said himself in describing his labours,” merely refer to the utterance preserved in the _Dicta Patricii_, and that the first _Dictum_ was the source of the compiler of the _Liber apud Ultanum_. I think we may go a step farther, and attempt to answer the question, How did the _Dicta Patricii_ get into the copy of Tírechán’s Memoir? It seems not unlikely that they were preserved in the very _Liber apud Ultanum_ which Tírechán used. One would judge from Tírechán’s extracts that it contained miscellaneous entries about Patrick’s life, and it may well have contained the _Dicta Patricii_. If so, we can easily understand that they might have been copied at Ardbraccan from the Ardbraccan book into a MS. of Tírechán—possibly by Tírechán himself.