I Follow St Patrick
by Oliver St John Gogarty
Oliver St John Gogarty, poet and surgeon, was a close associate of Arthur Griffith in Sinn Féin. He was appointed a senator in the first Senate of the Irish Free State. His memorable book, I Follow St Patrick, is an evocation of Ireland’s national saint through the places in Wales, France, and Ireland with which tradition connects him. Here the poet attempts finally to sum up the character of Patrick the man.
That he was a man, first of all, of the highest courage is an outstanding fact, and this in an age when physical courage was a prerequisite of existence. Secondly, that he was a silent man who kept his own counsel and one in whom his converts could confide and on whom rely is beyond doubt.
The first impression he must have made on the heathen chieftains was that of a man unintimidatable and devoid of fear. Had he been otherwise he would not have gone far with them nor would they have respected his teaching. They under-stood courage. Rome awed them, and he was the nearest emissary they ever chanced to meet.
He gained men’s respect however hostile they were and however humiliating were the conditions with which at times he was surrounded. Like Socrates pausing in his retreat from Delium, he impressed his victorious enemies by the majesty of his lofty manhood.
He was in their power, but they hesitated to pursue. He was dignified, a man of worth. He must have had a strong spirit, for in all the 20 years or so that it took to found the Church we hear of no Irish apostates during his lifetime. And he had no locum tenens while absent in Rome…
Deficiency
If we lack steadfastness as a nation, the deficiency is made good by that Roman Briton who knew not fear and whom nothing could dissuade.
As for endurance, compared to the conditions which men of nearly every century but the last few endured, we have nothing to endure. In the times in which the saint lived there was in the outlying parts of the empire a condition of things which, seen in the light of the social standards of today, was almost incredible.
Never in the world’s history were the poor subjected to greater oppression, never was there less relief. Houseless, unsanitary (even in the palaces this was the state), unsegregated from maniacs and leprosy and lupus, half-naked, untreated for even the simplest maladies, subject to the terrors of witchcraft, the poor, devoid of hope ignorant of better things, were used as chattels to be bartered for cattle or sold to the brothels of Europe as Coroticus sold the Christian virgins whom he seized after their baptism by St Patrick.
To these slaves he brought a soul and to their kings he gave a conscience.
Though it took centuries to blossom out, the sentiment which made for the respect for women and amelioration of their lot was inculcated by him. To a savage culture he introduced civilisation.
He did more than this. Inherent in the religion which he taught were ideas which, when translated into the secular world, were of inestimable advantage for the nation. These were ideas which were to release the country from a system of tribal sub-divisions, and in the end to emancipate the country’s mind from a petty parochial outlook and unite it to the civilisation of Europe.
While the Imperium Romanum was going down in chaos, those who were to become the Irish nation and the saviours of what was left of Christian civilisation were being brought into one fold in Ireland by the saint. Relapses to political narrowness there have been now and then, but generally the far-flung Irish race is inseparably identified with Roman Chris-tianity the world over. The personality of the Irish-man has gained amplitude from it, and there is certain friendliness in the idea of a Paddy. He is as a person whose general characteristics are well known.
He is approachable wherever he is. He is not despised as a prig or avoided as a bigot: there is something wide and uninsular about him. This he got from the univers-ality of that empire which the saint represented spiritually when it disappeared secularly before the wild tribes who resented its peace.
Personality
Put in another way, the personality of St Patrick, which every Irishman shares to some extent, may be measured negatively – if there be a way of measuring things negatively (and I am sure there is among mathe-maticians, who were the first to invent minuses and put a value on the non-existent) – by considering his opposite. How would it have been had the land been converted gradually and by half a dozen apostles instead of one? Or by a few of the lordly rhetoricians who resented the showing up of their lack of missionary zeal by the success of a colleague whom they affected to despise, but who was about to restore missionary ardour to the Church?
Now that the question is put, it will be seen that it is unthinkable. Nevertheless we can see what a loss of personality it would have implied. It comes to this then: that an Ireland without St Patrick is unthinkable. Every person in our island shares something of the personality of that steadfast and enduring man who is spoken of more frequently with affection than with awe.
He sentenced himself to a life-long and barbarous exile for our sake. He travelled with but little inter-mission throughout the country, faced its manifold dangers and founded single-handed an organisation “which in the last times he had excellently and kindly planted”, and which is as enduring as the man himself, and as quick today as he himself is alive in the hearts of the people. He met savages and made them Christians who to this day owe to him largely that which makes them kindly Irish.
He is a man after their own hearts: unmiserly, fearless, sudden and unafraid to denounce what he disapproved. He got nothing for himself for his service and self-sacrifice except detraction from Britain. Is it any wonder that so many of our people keep alive the image and likeness, and do not hesitate to call themselves by his high patrician name, which means a Roman noble, of the noblest Roman of them all?
From I Follow St Patrick, by Oliver St John Gogarty (London: Rich & Cowan, 1938).