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St. Patrick's wasted land?

• Message 1. 

  Posted by Mick_mac (U2874010) on Thursday, 6th April 2006

  The discussion on the thread ‘Roman Army in Britain’ about social breakdown and the Saxon ‘adventus’ in 5th century Britain has put me in mind of St. Patrick’s Confessio and the mystery associated with his account of his escape from captivity in Ireland. In it he tells us that he traveled on foot a distance of 200 miles across country [to south-western Ireland?] in order to locate a ship that would take him to freedom. Go to to read Patrick's Confessio in full but I have abridged the relevant section as follows:
  
  ‘And on the same day that I arrived, the ship was setting out from the place … and forthwith we put to sea….And after three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: ‘….we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being.’ …. but behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, …. and from that day they had food abundantly. They discovered wild honey, besides, …. And a second time, after many years, I was taken captive. On the first night I accordingly remained with my captors, but I heard a divine prophecy, saying to me: ‘You shall be with them for two months.’ So it happened. On the sixtieth night the Lord delivered me from their hands… On the journey he provided us with food and fire and dry weather every day, until on the tenth day we came upon people. As I mentioned above, we had journeyed through an unpopulated country for twenty-eight days, and in fact the night that we came upon people we had no food…. And after a few years I was again in Britain with my parents.’
  
  The mystery concerns Patrick’s landfall after three days at sea. Where was it? Why was it a desert. Who captured him a second time for a two month period?
  
  Any ideas? What do you think?
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by thegoodbadugly (U2942713) on Friday, 7th April 2006

  it could have been america as both st patrick and st brendan are belived to have discovered america long before christopher columbus and egyptians are belived to have been there as well,
  
  it is pointless putting up threads about ireland or anybody irish as the posters here and on other boards on the bbc have a lot of difficulty with anything irish ,something got to do with the attempts at genocide of the irish by the british and the out and out murder and submission of ireland and the irish,when they are reminded of what they did they deny it like the nazis deny the holocaust,
  
  it is an interesting post about st patrick though.
  
  yours anthony

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  Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Sunday, 16th April 2006

  I'm Irish and I haven't a clue what the last poster is on about.
  
  On the subject of St Patrick's 'writings' you have to understand that they are nothing of the kind. They are words attributed to the character many centuries later by writers with an agenda - namely that of perpetuating a reverence for and belief in St Patrick as both an historical figure and the nominal 'instigator' of the christian faith in Ireland. There is little or nothing in them to help the modern historian distinguish between those elements that might be transcriptions of an older oral tradition and those other elements that may simply have been 'concocted' to lend them a dubious historical authenticity.
  
  Given the amount of fantastic claims about the St Patrick character put forward by the same sources it would be advised, in an age where absence of empirical proof is a void often filled by theories ranging from absolute guesswork to absolute lunacy, not to take the contents of these attributed writings so literally.

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