CLXXXIX Saint Brigida bringeth unto Saint Patrick the Garment which was to enshroud his Body. CXC The Death of Saint Patrick. CXCI The Number of the Years of his Life. CXCII The Funeral Honors which Men and Angels paid unto the Body of the Saint. CXCIII The Light continueth for Twelve Days. CXCIV The Miraculous Rising of the Sea between the Contending People. CXCV Two Wains appear, the which are sent by a Miracle. CXCVI The Sepulture of Saint Patrick in the City of Dunum. A Chronological Table to the Lives of St. Patrick ILLUSTRATIONS Images of Saint Columba, Saint Patrick, and Saint Brigida, Taken from the Spicilegium Sanctorum, and engraven at Paris, A.D. 1629, by Messingham. . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ The Saint Patrick of Ancient Ages The Saint Patrick of Medieval Times The Saint Patrick of Our Own Century PREFACE. The present volume has three objects in view: first, to present the life of Saint Patrick without writing a history of the national church which he founded or introducing irrelevant matter; secondly, to place his life and character before the reader as they have been handed down to us in the most ancient extant documents, without overcoating or withholding anything in the originals; and, thirdly, to deliver to the public at as low a price as possible the original documents grouped together. At first I had intended to present the Seven Lives of St. Patrick as published by Colgan; but, to my knowledge, there is no copy of the _Acta Triadis Thaumaturgae_ in this country, and the four lives which I have omitted--that is, by Benignus, Patrick Junior, Eiselan the Wise, and Probus--are of little consequence. The metrical life by St. Fiech is undoubtedly the most ancient and the most removed from saintly imaginings of miracles. The other two, that by Saint MacEvin and that by Jocelin, appear to have been elaborate compendiums of stories written in antecedent ages, and extant in their time, concerning Saint Patrick. Of the life by Saint Fiech I have made a rude translation corresponding with the original; of the Tripartite I have given Professor Hennessy's version; and of the extraordinary biography by Jocelin I reproduce, for the first time in this country, the rendering from Colgan by Mr. Swift, as published by the Hibernia Press Company, at Dublin, in 1809. Colgan's Latin version of the Life of Saint Patrick by Jocelin is given by the Bollandists, and may be seen in many libraries in this country; but the original Lives, as published at Louvain, are at the Irish College in Rome and at Trinity College, Dublin. A copy may be found elsewhere, but, if so, it is exceedingly valuable, forasmuch as it is exceedingly rare. The Life of Saint Patrick by Saint Fiech will convey an estimate of his character about the time of his death; the Tripartite life by Saint MacEvin will