Page 62 - Demo

62 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
their territory saw Patrick’s captivity with much more probability than those who live near Mount Slemish in County Antrium”.
It is told that in the loneliness of his exacting life of captivity on the slopes of whatever bleak height he may have inhabited, Patrick’s thoughts turned to God and the resultant faith he received strengthened him, physically and spiritually. In his own Confessio Patrick says:
‘On coming to Ireland I daily herded flocks and although I lived in the woods and mountains, many times in the day I prayed. I said a hundred prayers by day, and almost as many by night. I rose before day in the snow and the frost and the rain, yet I received no harm; for the spirit of God was warm upon me’.
One night, towards the end of his six years in bondage, Patrick escaped and after a journey of more than “one hundred [Roman] miles,” which some sources claim took him to the Wood of Foclut, present-day Foghill, near Killala, in county Mayo, where he was given succour and sanctuary and from where he afterwards boarded a ship at a rocky spot near the historic fishing village of Kilcummin, since known as Carraig Phadraig - ‘Patrick’s Rocks.’ The ship sailed to Wicklow (some accounts mention Galway) and from there following an eventful voyage on another vessel, whose cargo was Irish wolfhounds, Patrick found himself, in his own words ‘once more among the Britons.’ His freedom, however, did not bring the happiness he expected and he recorded how his waking and sleeping hours were troubled with thoughts of Ireland, a land, and race, who despite his years of harsh captivity, he had come to love.
It was during this period that he was favoured with the remarkable vision or dream relat- ing to his future Irish apostolate. He describes it in his Confessio:
“I saw, in a nocturnal vision, a man named Victoricus coming as if from Ireland, with a large parcel of letters, one of which he handed to me. On reading the beginning of it, I found it contained these words: ‘The voice of the Irish;’ and while reading it I thought I heard, at the same moment, the voice of a multitude of persons near the Wood of Foclut, which is near the western sea; and they cried out, as if with one voice, ‘We entreat thee, holy youth, to come and henceforth walk amongst us.’ And I was greatly affected in my heart, and could read no longer; and then I awoke.”
Accordingly, Patrick left his home and his people and went travelling, and next, in a strange contrast with his previous labours, we find him studying in France, first at Nantes, then later on the island of Lerins, near Cannes, where he remained for three years from
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