Page 65 - Demo

Chapter two 65
Full details of Patrick’s journeying have not come down to us, but it is known that ac- companied by Odran his charioteer, and Jarlath-‘Iarla,’ his most ardent spiritual student, both later saints, he went northwards from Tara to Magh Sléacht-the ‘Plain of Adorations,’ in the district now occupied by Ballyconnell in county Cavan, where it is recorded he felled and demolished Ireland’s feared, chief-idol of human-sacriice Crom Cruach, along with twelve smaller idols that stood as sentinels around it. He then went across the river Shannon into Connacht, where at Ogulla Well near Rath Croghan, present day Tulsk, in Roscommon, he met and converted the two daughters of King Laoghaire; ‘Ethna the Fair’ and ‘Fedelma the Ruddy’, both of whom were, at the time living here under the tuition of two druids at the famed Druidic School of Cashel Manannain.
It is told that while in Connacht, Patrick spent the forty days and nights of Lent fasting on the summit of the towering pagan named mountain anciently and alternatively known as ‘Mons Egli/Cruachán Aigle-‘The Eagle’s Stack’, since known as Cruach Phádraig, or more com- monly Croagh Patrick, the celebrated mountain of pilgrimage, close by Westport, in county Mayo. Local lore maintains that climbers in the region sometimes hear the sound of a hand bell, which encourages them to keep climbing to the summit, even though the bell or bell ringer have never been spotted.
That said, the consensus of belief is that the bell is rung by St Patrick himself! Mythol- ogy informs us that it was from this mountain top that Patrick commanded all the serpents and venomous things in Ireland into the ocean, thereby ridding Ireland of viperous crea- tures forever.
Now, while the Irish tradition credits him with banishing the snakes from the land, others suggest however that because of Ireland’s climate snakes never actually dwelled here and that the “snakes” referred to may well be the serpent symbolism and tattoos associated with the Pagan Druids/Priests of the time. The tradition also credits Patrick with educating the Irish people about the Trinity concept and he is reputed to have done this by utilising the common shamrock to highlight the Christian dogma of ‘three divine persons in the one God’