Legends have vitality and continue, because in their origin
they so exactly serve to explain or illustrate some personal character
in a man which no cold statement could give.
Now St. Patrick, the whole story and effect of him, is a matter of
Personality. There was once--twenty or thirty years ago--a whole school
of dunderheads who wondered whether St. Patrick ever existed, because
the mass of legends surrounding his name troubled them. How on earth
(one wonders) do such scholars consider their fellow-beings! Have they
ever seen a crowd cheering a popular hero, or noticed the expression
upon men's faces when they spoke of some friend of striking power
recently dead? A great growth of legends around a man is the very best
proof you could have not only of his existence but of the fact that he
was an origin and a beginning, and that things sprang from his will or
his vision. There were some who seemed to think it a kind of favour done
to the indestructible body of Irish Catholicism when Mr. Bury wrote his
learned Protestant book upon St. Patrick. It was a critical and very
careful bit of work, and was deservedly praised; but the favour done us
I could not see! It is all to the advantage of non-Catholic history that
it should be sane, and that a great Protestant historian should make
true history out of a great historical figure was a very good sign.
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