The story as told in the Introduction seems to preserve a tradition that an attempt was made by Patrick to change the penalty of eric fine for murder into a penalty for death. This is the motive of the poem which is fathered upon Dubthach: “I pronounce the judgment of death, of death for his crime to every one _who kills_” (p. 13). This is to be reconciled with the Christian doctrine of perfect forgiveness by considering that the body only is killed, the soul is forgiven: the “murderer is adjudged to heaven, and it is not to death he is adjudged” (_ib._). The commentator notices the disagreement between this principle, which in the story Patrick is assumed to have established, and the custom of eric fine which actually prevailed, and explains it on the ground that Patrick’s successors had no power of bestowing heaven, hence the death penalty was discontinued, and “no one is put to death for his intentional crimes, as long as ‘eric’-fine is obtained.” The historical fact underlying this story is, I submit, that the Church in Patrick’s day attempted, unsuccessfully, to supersede the system of composition for manslaughter and private retaliation by making the act a public offence punishable by death. [The questions connected with the material of the laws, and the Feine, lie quite outside my competence, and do not concern the scope of this book. I may refer to Atkinson’s article “Feine,” in his glossary (_Ancient Laws_, vol. vi.); Rhŷs, _Studies in Early Irish History_, pp. 52-55 (_Proc, of Brit. Acad._ vol. i.). For the legal processes and customs, the chief work is M. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s _Études sur le droit celtique_, 2 vols. 1895; see also the Prefaces to the volumes of the _Ancient Laws_, and Sir H. Maine’s _Early Institutions_.] 13. _Patrick’s Visits to Connaught_ An analysis of the itinerary which Tírechán has traced for Patrick through Connaught shows that he compressed into a single journey events which must have belonged to different visits. I pointed this out in a paper on the “Itinerary of Patrick in Connaught” (_Proc. of R.I.A._ xxiv. c. 2, 1903). It was remembered that Patrick visited Connaught three times (Tír. 329₁₂), and we may probably suppose that on the two later occasions he would have not only worked in new fields, but revisited the scenes of his earlier work. Tírechán, who used written material as well as oral information, worked all his records into the compass of a single journey. This is betrayed by a number of inconsistencies in the narrative, and it is possible to show that certain events which he ascribes to the same journey must have happened on different occasions.