He was a petty prince of that part of the country, afterwards called Dalruadia, or the principality of the Dalruads, from the prevalence of that demi-tribe, in Ulster; and when Patrick--in prosecution of that mission of grace, to which he had been deputed by divine interposition; and impelled, perhaps, moreover, by a compassionate zeal and Christian recollection of his previous bondage--undertook, amongst other conversions, that of his former master, we find that the sentiment was not reciprocated on _his_ part; but that, either ashamed of allowing himself to be persuaded, in his old age, to abandon the religion in which he had been early initiated; or marked out by Providence as an awful victim to the prevailing superstition, he plunged himself into a fire which had accidentally broken out in his castle, and so was consumed by that element which he had before worshipped as his God! Athlone,--or as anciently and correctly written, Ath-luain,--the name of a town situated on the river Shannon, where _it is fordable_, bounding Leinster in Westmeath, and Connaught in Galway, is compounded of the words _Ath_, which signifies a ford, and _luain_, of the moon. The common people still call it Blah-luin, an evident corruption of _Baile-ath-luin_, that is, the village of the ford of the moon; equivalent to Moon-ford-town. This name establishes the analogy of the Syrian Astarte with the worship here paid to the “queen of night,” and the many lunettes, or gold crescents, found buried in the _neighbourhood_, are “confirmation strong” of the inference deduced. The moon, whose course through the heavens regulated the months of the early lunar year, and whose influence was regarded by the ancients, in common with that of the sun, as one of the _fertilising principles_ of _nature_, and as exerted chiefly amid wilds and woods, at a distance from the crowded abodes of man, had in this spot, apparently, a peculiar claim for her special appropriation. For here the aged majesty of the river Shannon, the Ganges of Ireland,--as we find reciprocally that Shannon is one of the Gangian names, and Saor, or Suir, the name of another Irish river, meaning “sacred” water, belongs also to the Indus itself,--displays its imposing grandeur in all the varieties of sublime and delightful scenery. Not far off is one of those beautiful lakes into which this monarch of waters expands himself, to bask, as it were, in repose, from the tiresome gaze attending the crowded path of his ordinary travels-- “Tho’ deep, yet clear; tho’ gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage; without o’erflowing full.”[225]