Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Oiseen the Bard and Saint Patrick; Legends of Ireland's Heroic Age; Early Irish Records, Vol. 1
In most parts of Ireland the traveller hears quaint stories about Saint Patrick, and sometimes perhaps imagines that the Saint visited the island for the benefit of witty guides, and to promote mirth in wet weather. He would hardly suspect that, during fourteen centuries, the subject of these stories has been regarded at countless hearths as the greatest man and the greatest benefactor that ever trod the Irish soil, and that there remains respecting him a vast cycle of legends, serious, pathetic, and profound. It could not have been otherwise. Ireland was a land of legends many ages before Saint Patrick visited it. There existed in all parts of it Colleges of Bards whose duty it was to preserve in song the history of every clan and ruling House. Such a people could not have forgotten the heroic man who had led them forth in their Exodus from the bondage of Pagan darkness. In many instances, doubtless, as the tale became a tradition, the foliage of an ever-active popular imagination gathered round the central stem of fact; but the fact remained.
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