It may have been at this crisis[28] in the history of Britain that the event happened which shaped the whole life of the son of Calpurnius, who had now reached the age of sixteen, in his home near the western sea. A fleet of Irish freebooters came to the coasts or river-banks in the neighbourhood seeking plunder and loading their vessels with captives. Patrick was at his father’s farmstead, and was one of the victims. Men-servants and maid-servants were taken, but his parents escaped; perhaps they were not there, or perhaps the pirates could not carry more than a certain number of slaves, and chose the young. Thus was Patrick, in his seventeenth year, carried into captivity in Ireland—“to the ultimate places of the earth,” as he says himself, as if Ireland were severed by half the globe from Britain. The phrase shows how thoroughly, how touchingly Roman was Patrick’s geographical view. The Roman Empire was the world, and all outside its fringe was in darkness, the ultimate places of the earth. § 2. _Captivity and Escape_ [Sidenote: CAPTURE OF PATRICK] Of all that befell Patrick during his captivity in Ireland we know little, yet the little knowledge we possess is more immediate and authentic than our acquaintance with any other episode of his life, because it comes from his own pen. But at the outset we encounter a puzzling contradiction between Patrick’s own words and the tradition which was afterwards current in Ireland as to the place of his bondage.[29] When the boats of his captors reached their haven, Patrick was led—so we should conclude from his own story—across the island into the kingdom of Connaught, to serve a master in the very furthest parts of the “ultimate land.” His master dwelled near the wood of Fochlad, “nigh to the western sea,” in north-western Connaught, to this day a wild and desolate land, though the forest has long since been cleared away. A part of this bleak country belonged to Amolngaid, who afterwards became king of Connaught, and it is still called by his name, Tirawley, “the land of Amolngaid.” But the wood of Fochlad was probably of larger extent than the district of Tirawley; it may have stretched over Mayo to the western promontory of Murrisk. Here, we should perhaps suppose, close to Crochan Aigli, the mount which has been immemorially associated with Patrick’s name,[30] the British slave served his master for six years.