This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler.
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
The Legends
of
Saint Patrick
BY
AUBREY DE VERE, LL.D.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS &MELBOURNE.
1892
INTRODUCTION.
Once more our readers are indebtedto a living poet for wide circulation of a volume of delightfulverse. The name of Aubrey de Vere is the more pleasantlyfamiliar because its association with our highest literature hasdescended from father to son. In 1822, sixty-seven yearsago, Sir Aubrey de Vere, of Curragh Chase, by Adare, in thecounty of Limerick—then thirty-four years old—firstmade his mark with a dramatic poem upon “Julian theApostate.” In 1842 Sir Aubrey published Sonnets,which his friend Wordsworth described as “the most perfectof our age;” and in the year of his death he completed adramatic poem upon “Mary Tudor,” published in thenext year, 1847, with the “Lamentation of Ireland, andother Poems.” Sir Aubrey de Vere’s “MaryTudor” should be read by all who have read Tennyson’splay on the same subject.
The gift of genius passed from Sir Aubrey to his third son,Aubrey Thomas de Vere, who was born in 1814, and through a longlife has put into music only noble thoughts associated with thelove of God and man, and of his native land. His firstwork, published forty-seven years ago, was a lyrical piece, inwhich he gave his sympathy to devout and persecuted men whoseways of thought were not his own. Aubrey de Vere’spoems have been from time to time revised by himself, and theywere in 1884 finally collected into three volumes, published byMessrs. Kegan Paul. Left free to choose from among theirvarious contents, I have taken this little book of “Legendsof St. Patrick,” first published in 1872, but in so doing Ihave unwillingly left many a piece that would please many areader.
They are not, however, inaccessible. Of the threevolumes of collected works, each may be had separately, and iscomplete in itself. The first contains “The Searchafter Proserpine, and other Poems—Classical andMeditative.” The second contains the “Legendsof St. Patrick, and Legends of Ireland’s Heroic Age,”including a version of the “Tain Bo.” The thirdcontains two plays, “Alexander the Great,” “St.Thomas of Canterbury,” and other Poems.
For the convenience of some readers, the following extractfrom the second volume of my “English Writers,” mayserve as a prosaic summary of what is actually known about St.Patrick.
H. M.
ST. PATRICK.
FROM“ENGLISHWRITERS.”
The birth of St. Patrick, Apostleand Saint of Ireland, has been generally placed in the latterhalf of the fourth century; and he is said to have died at theage of a hundred and twenty. As he died in the year493—and we may admit that he was then a very oldman—if we may say that he reached the age of eighty-eight,