There's Something about Patrick

PARADE MUSIC

St Patrick - he's the world's most famous Irishman,

but he wasn't even Irish.

-WELSH ACCENT:

-Lechyd da, lads!

You may now offer each other a sign of peace.

-Peas?

-Peace!

-Peace?

Nah, missed it.

He's celebrated for bringing Christianity to Ireland,

but the Irish were already being converted by the time he arrived.

Avast, ye heathens!

Oh! Oh, sorry!

Sorry!

Sorry!

He was a pious man whose terrible crime almost prevented

his mission to Ireland.

Something like this?

That's him! He's the one!

So I want to know how you go from minding sheep on a mountain

to becoming the man that some people think is the saviour

of all of Western civilisation.

Soon we're going to celebrate the feast of St Patrick,

a man most people know nothing about.

People go, "He drove the snakes out of Ireland."

No, he didn't! Those snakes left looking for work!

I'd say there's a cobra on Bondi Beach in a Wexford jersey

who would take your hand off for a packet of Tayto!

LAUGHTER, CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Snakes are exactly like Irish emigrants to Australia.

They love the sunshine and every so often all their skin peels off!

CROWD LAUGHS

What plant is he associated with?

-Marijuana? I don't know!

-Marijuana? THEY LAUGH

He drove all the snakes out of Ireland.

He was a boss.

He always wore green. He was a boss!

He helped, um, the Irish people with England, like, English people.

Fighting against the, um, English for independence.

-He was awesome!

-Who was awesome?

-Patrick!

I didn't know he was real!

LAUGHTER

Time to separate fact from fiction. The real historical Patrick

is more interesting than the man of myth, but what do we actually...?

MEN YELL

We know Patrick was about 16 when at the beginning of the 5th century,

he was kidnapped by Irish slave traders

from his hometown of Bannavem Taburniae.

His father was a Roman civil servant.

His grandfather was a priest.

PHONE RINGS

But Patrick wasn't religious at this point.

He, in fact, was...

He was taken aboard a craft probably with many other Irish slaves

and shipped off to Ireland where he spent the next six years at least.

Uh, can we go back that way?

Seriously. No, no, seriously, like.

I'm not actually St Patrick, you know that?

'Patrick wasn't holy as a boy.'

I'd say he did exactly what we all did.

You said you went to church and then walked around town for an hour,

got home and played "Who Said Mass Russian Roulette" with your ma!

LAUGHTER

Do you remember that? "Who said mass?"

"Uhhh...Father...

"Dougal McGuire?"

CROWD LAUGHS

"You're wrong!" I'd like to be an Irish teenage Catholic now!

"Who said mass?" "The parish priest."

"How do you know?" "He's the only one left!"

A lot of people have an image of St Patrick.

How close to the real historical figure is this image?

It's close to the real Patrick,

the sense that Patrick was a slave in Ireland.

He came back to Ireland to convert people, but a huge amount of it

is based on a sort of legendary take on Patrick,

which was created for reasons of propaganda in about the 7th century.

We're lucky that the real Patrick left writings behind him,

which tell us about his interior life, about his spirituality.

And we can contrast it with the way he is portrayed

in the later biographies by Muirchu and Tireachan.

So the oldest of these writings that still exist

are here in Trinity College?

Yes, we've got the earliest copy of Patrick's Confessio.

It's in the Book of Armagh which is a 9th century manuscript here.

That copy of the Confessio is one which is edited down

and removes some of the more controversial sequences

of Patrick's own writings.

The real Patrick is somebody who feels he's flawed,

who admits to a sin in his youth.

-St Patrick committed a great crime when he was 15 or 16. Right?

-Ah, no!

What do you think the crime was?

He burnt something on a hill or something?

-Murder?

-Do you think?

Two-timing!

Two-timing his girlfriend!

-SHE CHUCKLES

-Hanky-panky!

Only Ireland would have a patron saint

who committed a great crime as a teenager

and still have the main juvenile detention centre in the State

called St Patrick's Institution for Young Offenders!

CROWD LAUGHS AND APPLAUDS Brilliant!

The real Patrick is somebody who is quite angst-ridden.

He worries constantly about his calling in Ireland.

And he is somebody who freely admits that he has many flaws.

On the other hand, the Patrick of legend

is essentially like a superhero out of comics or a manga.

So much stuff is made up about St Patrick

that we're going to have a bit of fun now, OK?

Your name is Gene, right? I want you to tell me if this is true or false

according to the Book of Armagh.

His fingers, St Patrick's fingers, glowed in the dark?

-True or false?

-False.

False? No, it's true! They actually lost the horses

one day in the dark, they couldn't find them

so he put up his hand and light emanated from his fingers

like some sort of Catholic bishop ET!

CROWD LAUGHS

ET IMPRESSION: St Patrick, phone Rome!

CROWD LAUGHS

In a time of great peril, his staff lit up

so he could lead his followers away from danger. True or false?

True.

It's false!

That was Gandalf.

CROWD LAUGHS

When Patrick was a boy, he was bitten by a radioactive spider...

CROWD LAUGHS

..which gave him all the powers of a spider. True or false?

-I think it's false.

-False! That was St Brigid!

CROWD LAUGHS

For somebody like Muirchu,

a saint was somebody who would be perfect,

who would have lots of miraculous power from God.

When he reads Patrick's writings, what he finds is somebody

who has self-doubt. There aren't miracles in Patrick's writings.

For a 7th century writer who wants to say,

"Here's Patrick, the apostle of the Irish,"

he doesn't want the real figure.

He wants somebody who will be malleable and fit their propaganda.

Guys! Can we focus here? Can we just focus for a second?

All I'm hearing is, "Brigid this," it's "Colmcille that."

OK. We need a bigger market share.

Patrick needs to have "banished" something. OK?

Monkeys?

What has a monkey ever done to anybody? Look..!

-It has to be something dangerous.

-Brother Michael?

Brother Michael isn't dangerous!

You don't have to share a dorm with him.

OK, OK, look.

Guys, it has to be something truly terrifying

that strikes fear into the hearts of men, eh?

-I've got it!

-So do I!

-Snakes!

-Women!

'Various churches were vying with each other.'

In particular, Armagh and Kildare were two major rivals

with their saints Patrick and Brigid.

They're not simply writing about the saint as a saint,

they're also using the saint as a vehicle to make claims

about their own overlordship.

Patrick is associated with Armagh, even though he doesn't mention Armagh once in any of his writings.

What happened was later monks associated him, a famous person,

with their place, to enhance the reputation of the place.

I was appalled by this, until I remembered I was from County Offaly,

home of Barack Obama, President of the United States of America!

LAUGHTER

I'd like to get Patrick and Muirchu in a room together

to see what Patrick would say to Muirchu, going, "Where the hell did that come from?"

And Muirchu going, "I kind of had to beef up the brand, to be honest with you."

Ignore your many gods.

There are a number of theories about where Patrick's hometown of Bannaven Taburnie was.

Some suggest that it was in Roman Britain, the area now known as Wales.

(WELSH ACCENT) Peace be with you.

-There's also a theory he was French.

-(FRENCH ACCENT) Peace be with you.

Others suggest he was Scottish.

But which theory is correct?

-So where was Patrick from?

-He was from somewhere in Western Britain.

I suppose, in modern terms, we would say Wales.

CHORAL SINGING

Many of us have an image in our heads of what Patrick looked like.

But surely the real Patrick wasn't green Santa? Or in the Dubliners.

So Billy, you're telling me that this is what St Patrick would have looked like?

Well, Patrick the slave anyway, yeah.

So, no sort of big green bishop's garb, crozier, mitre?

No, that's all later medieval bishops.

This is much more practical and down-to-earth, what a slave

might have been wearing on the mountainside.

Modelling the slave chic circa the fifth century.

Is there any nice way of sitting down in this

-without flashing yourself to all in sundry?

-Knees together.

Knees together like a Jane Austen novel, like that! Right.

Can I ask you why we're in Mayo?

Everything I learned in school, in the tradition, says we should be on a hill called Slemish in Antrim.

Patrick only mentions one place name in all of the Confessio -

the woods at Voclut, which is near the western ocean.

That has been identified as most likely being a place in County Mayo.

And what sort of country is Ireland at this point?

-What sort of land is it?

-It would have been rural.

There would have been no cities. It would have been quite fragmented.

Lots of smaller kingdoms, lots of political intrigue and war,

quite a hostile place to be by modern standards.

And would they all be wearing this - this beautiful garb?

HE LAUGHS

I don't know why you're laughing, I'm freezing my nuts off here!

I can see why Patrick would go for celibacy cos you can't use them in this weather!

HE LAUGHS Do we have any evidence

of what pagan rituals were like, or pagan life was like at this point?

We have the names of some of their gods and goddesses,

we think, from later mythological tradition.

And we have bits and pieces of their rituals.

We do have one account from the 10th century.

And it talks about how poets used to look for 'imbas forosnai',

which is wisdom of elimination,

or that they would look for poetic inspiration.

The way they used to do it was, they would get a piece of meat,

and it would be the meat of a dog or a cat, or a pig.

-They're not very fussy, are they?!

-They're not!

Do we know what that is? In Ireland, you don't really need to know any more, in fairness, do you?

That could be anything at all. That could be Shergar! OK.

-Eww! Eat the raw meat?

-Yeah.

-Chew it?

-Chew it.

-Mmmm, it's lovely.

-And then take it out and offer it to your pagan gods.

So whoever... Bjork and Lunasa and Sinead O'Connor,

and all the pagan gods. I'll put it down here.

-You have to wait for the gods to inspire you.

-OK. Right.

Into darkness.

Cool! I've just seen when you die, Billy.

HE LAUGHS

Are you doing anything next week? Because...

-Are you doing anything next week?

-Yeah, I have a few things lined up.

-No, you're not actually!

Sorry about that!

Do they have any other traditions we know about?

There's a few different rituals described.

There was one guy who visited Ireland in the 12th century.

He was named Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald of Wales.

And he talks about how kings used to be inaugurated.

He speaks of one group of kings, who I think come from Donegal,

and as part of the initiation ceremony,

the would-be king would, em...

How do I put this delicately?

He would embrace a white mare as part of the ritual.

You mean embrace as in...?

-Yeah. In the biblical sense.

-As in second bar, five bar gate.

-As in - that sort of... You're making that up.

-No.

-Is this true?

-Well...

-I'm not doing this, by the way!

I've eaten that thing, but if somebody leads a white mare

around the corner, I am not publicly copulating with a white mare!

ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYS

There's no way you can go straight to him. You'd have to build up to it, surely?

Probably a goat before that. And then an Alsatian fluffer

just before you get to the goat!

HE LAUGHS

Is there anything written about that?

Funnily enough, Alsatian fluffers are not mentioned in early Ireland!

I'd imagine that was in the Book of Kells - that was probably taken out!

When Patrick arrived in pagan Ireland, druids had immense power.

And there are still a few hanging around.

The druid was a very powerful person who had three functions -

the bard, the storyteller, the history keeper,

the harp player, for example.

The bard had the power to bring down the king through satires

if the king was abusing his powers, for example.

IRISH LANGUAGE PRAYER

You had the role of the healer,

the diviner, the seer, the shaman.

And then you had the ollamh, the brehon.

I invoke the goddess Brigid as the maiden of springtime.

I call on your inspiration.

-Tar agus failte.

-(Tar agaus failte)

Druids had authority right through the country, unlike kings.

Kings, their power was very much regional.

Nobody could harm a druid.

So they were there to negotiate when two kings were battling.

They would negotiate with each other.

Later writings portray Patrick as some kind of druid slayer.

He goes up against them, and he does battle with them.

As a modern day druid, how does that make you feel about him?

Well, I don't think he was. I mean, I read Patrick's writings -

his Confessio and his Epistula and he comes across

as a very, very humble kind of man. Very insecure.

These stories you hear, that he had druidic powers himself,

and he could match the druids with his own druidic power,

from his writings I don't get a sense that that was what he was like at all.

So, I don't actually have,

I suppose, a negative attitude to Patrick from those stories.

But I think many pagans might have because of the legacy.

DRUMMING

What does the ceremony today involve? What is today, first of all?

We're celebrating Imbolc, which is honouring the goddess Brigid.

It's interesting this is a documentary about Patrick.

When he came to Ireland

people would have been honouring the goddess Brigid.

She is the triple goddess.

She represents the maiden, the mother and the crone.

May this water bring you courage.

And it's interesting because Patrick's emblem,

the story is he had the shamrock to explain the trinity.

That would have been very easy for people to understand because

the notion of the triple deity was already here.

Behold the light that I have nurtured.

The sun is now returning.

-So is that Brigid the same as St Brigid?

-I think so.

Brigid was very important in Ireland at the time.

And she couldn't have been gotten rid of.

But remember, Christianity - when Patrick came, it was a very gradual process.

He didn't come in and just Christianise the whole country.

It wasn't until about the 16th century that paganism was seen

as bad and that Christianity was seen as good.

So that polarity came into play. But up to then, you could hold both.

IRISH LANGUAGE PRAYER

Somebody like Patrick, as a slave, probably would've been eating very basic foods,

maybe drinking whey and curds and porridge, that kind of thing.

He's Little Miss Moffat at this point!

Where was he kept? Was he chained up? Was he with other people? Was he on his own?

Well, he's working as a herdsman.

In the summertime herds would have been brought away from the farm

and brought to upland pastures, pretty isolated.

Imagine how bored he was!

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

SHEEP BLEATS

Times like July they wouldn't have had meat because the slaughtering wasn't happening until the autumn.

What they used to do was they would use a small blade

and they would open the veins of a cow.

And they would draw some of the blood and then they would boil this.

-I have some.

-Why do you always have this stuff?!

-So, we have some cattle blood here.

-Ah, no way!

-Yeah, we'll make it into a cake.

-Can we spice this up a bit?

I don't have an awful lot of blood spice at the moment.

-How long does that take to make?

-We just need to congeal it, essentially.

It's still in liquid form. And to drink it like that,

-you know, we're not savages here.

-You'd be mad to drink it like that!

-That would be ridiculous!

They used to call July hungry July

because you would have been coming to the end of your stores from last autumn.

Mmmm! Mmmm!

That's disgusting!

I think I'd rather eat the spoon!

It was slavery, pure and simple. He was dragged away from his home,

his family, sent to rural Ireland, had to learn Irish to survive.

What else would you call it? It was like the Gaeltacht!

LAUGHTER You didn't have to herd livestock.

Have you ever been at a teenage ceili in Connemara?

Not only did I need a collie dog -

some of those women should have been dipped!

LAUGHTER

I danced with a girl from Laois, I got liver fluke!

On the mountain is where he discovered God.

He prayed up to 100 times a day and 100 times a night.

Normal obvious prayers like, "Dear God, can you fix it for me

"to get off this mountain? I'm cold, I'm hungry.

"I do sleep quite well - that's mainly cos I've got lots of stuff to count!

LAUGHTER

"But I'm very lonely. Yesterday I trapped a badger

"and pretended it was a tiny nun just so I had someone to talk to!

"I call her Mother TB-sa."

We don't actually know how he escaped from the original slave owner at all?

-No. We don't. We don't.

-Maybe he had a poster of Rita Hayworth,

and they only copped he was gone when they threw a stone and there was a big hole in her head. Is that true?

-I doubt it.

-Is it true that he tried to get a motorbike

and jump over barbed wire into Switzerland? That's not true either!

OK. It might not have been in the Book of Armagh

but I'm pretty sure it's one of these books, that himself, Pele

and Bobby Moore organised a football match against a German

national football team in Paris, to escape.

-I'm pretty sure he was an exceptional centre forward. Is that true?

-Yes.

That's true, is it?!

One day, on the mountain, he hears a voice.

And the voice says, "Soon you will go to your own country.

"Your ship is ready." You might call that a miracle.

I would call that a passenger announcement!

Basically he just heard, "Ladies and gentlemen,

"would passenger Patrick, passenger Patrick..

"First name... Saint...

"Please go to the boarding gate now.

"Aer Lingus would like to remind all our passengers not to use our logo

"to demonstrate God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit."

He talks about this arduous journey that he had of 200 miles

until he got a ship.

There would have been brigands, so they would have been hostile people,

maybe out to rob him or capture him into slavery again, who knows?

What happens when he gets to the ship?

He asks these sailors to bring him over the sea

and initially they refuse, they tell him they don't want to bring him,

but he goes back to his hut and he prays,

and then he goes back to them and eventually they relent

and then the leader of this group,

he, bizarrely enough,

Patrick mentioned that he offers St Patrick his nipples

-for St Patrick to suck.

-What?!

Yeah. As a sign of submission.

That's how we made friends in this country in those days.

The Romans were probably cutting each other open,

going, "We will mix our blood to be brothers forever."

We were all going, "Seamus, take off your top.

"Come on, and the bra as well, let the dog see the rabbit."

I'll never be that close to a man.

I've hugged my brothers three times my entire adult life, and

all of those times have involved Ray Houghton putting a ball into a net.

There is actually quite a lapse of time

between the time when he escaped and when he came back to Ireland.

I always had the impression that he stayed 10, maybe 15,

maybe more years before he came back to Ireland.

My own pet idea is that Patrick was in fact an only child

and that he simply had to wait until his parents popped off,

and therefore he was the sole inheritor,

and when he talks, therefore, about spending money on people,

he says to the Irish, "I've spent the wealth of 15 men"

or something like that, "to help you guys and your Christianity."

You've given me an image of St Patrick popping in to his dad, going,

-"How you feeling? How's Ma? She's bearing up well."

-Yeah.

He seems to have hung in there. When the two of them have moved on,

presumably by natural causes, he's the sole heir.

I don't think we can go too far here!

What possesses Patrick to return to Ireland, where he has been abused,

mistreated and kept as a slave for six years?

He was mad!

Anybody looking at it now would think he was out of his head.

Maybe he thought he was out of his head.

He couldn't say no, because he had this message.

The "voice of the Irish", as he called it himself,

imploring him to come back.

Patrick escapes and ends up in Britain.

After a few years, he hears the voice of the Irish

calling him back in a vision.

The voice calling him back, back...

(FUNNY ACCENT) "C'mere t'me!

"C'mon back to Ireland! C'mon!

"You don't have to come for that long,

"maybe a short city break or sum'n like that.

"Maybe stay in a B&B or sum'n, all the boys in the gang miss you.

"Say hello, boys." "Baaa!" "C'mon!"

"I'm sick of the druids. The clergy have too much power in this country.

"You should spread Christianity

"and that will put an end to that sort of thing!

"C'mon back to Ireland in its hour of need!"

"Further details are available on www.thegathering.com."

The alternative tradition of Patrick

which has him spending between 10 and 40 years on the Continent

being educated in Gaul and in Italy.

The place in Gaul that's mentioned is Auxerre.

The bishop of Auxerre is a fella called Germanus.

We know a lot about Germanus and Auxerre.

You could take it that type of thing is plausible but not true

because Patrick never mentions that in his writings.

But we don't have to bin it because almost certainly

it applied to another fella who was involved in the early Irish mission,

a man called Palladius.

Palladius is mentioned in continental sources in the year 431.

-Which is a year before St Patrick.

-A very significant year.

The year before Patrick is supposed to have come to Ireland,

this man Palladius, according to continental sources,

is sent by no less a person than the Pope, Pope Celestine,

who was the Pope at the time.

He is sent as the first bishop, primus episcopus,

to the Irish believing in Christ.

This is mind-blowing if you've grown up

in primary and secondary school in Ireland.

Patrick is not the man who introduced Christianity.

There were Christians here before him and even a bishop.

If Palladius got here before Patrick, it begs the question...

How come do the streets look like this on March 17th

and this on July 6th, Palladius' feast day.

-Have you ever heard of Palladius?

-No.

What would you say if I said

-Palladius came to Ireland before St Patrick?

-No!

He's a liar! A big liar!

-Have you heard of a Palladius?

-What?

-Palladius?

-I'm only in first year!

It's time for Palladius to be restored to his rightful place

in the pantheon of Irish heroes.

No longer will he be the forgotten man,

the George Lazenby of missionaries,

the Jim Corr to St Patrick's Andrea.

-Who do we want?!

-Palladius!

-When do we want him?!

-Some time around the start of the 5th century!

-Who do we want?!

-Palladius!

-When do we want him?!

-Some time around the start of the 5th century!

Onwards!

DRUMMING AND CHEERING

Unfortunately, the historians in Armagh found themselves in a jam

because they didn't want anybody else in Ireland before Patrick.

Their solution is to kill off Palladius.

Palladius arrives and he doesn't like the weather or the Irish

and he goes home. Patrick is on the next available flight.

The Patrick we know and commemorate on March 17th

is a composite St Patrick.

He's made up of traditions belonging to at least two separate people.

There does seem to be a constant undercurrent of murmurs

about himself, his personality, his missionary techniques,

about the people he's bringing the message to.

It's quite striking, although not unique to Patrick,

that whenever he talks about his success as a missionary,

it's more often than not about converting women.

He refers to one particular woman as being "strikingly good-looking".

Which really doesn't have anything to do with the message.

The fact that he says it implies that he has an eye for the ladies.

-Are you ready to pray?!

-Yes!

-I can't hear you! I said, "Are you ready to pray?!"

-Yes!

Woo! Woo!

I love you, Pat!

Easy, girl. I know! I know!

-Get off me!

-You're barred!

This is a reading from the Gospel of Matthew.

GIRLS SCREAM

Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.

Oh, spit on me, Patrick!

-Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

-Yeah!

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.

GIRLS CHEER

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be called children of God!

LOUD CHEERING

I can't go on.

Amen!

'He must have been massively charismatic

'if women were willing to leave their jewels on the altar for him.'

Anybody who reads Patrick will get the impression

he's massively charismatic, period. He's an extraordinary guy.

He's just on the right side of lunatic.

He's one of these guys we'd regard as OK, interesting and impressive

but not the kind of guy you want to sit beside on the bus.

I am finding myself liking real Patrick more and more.

Unbelievably brave, unbelievably charismatic.

What I've lost in my beliefs about this mythical figure

has been replaced by a new-found respect for the real guy.

He's the world's most famous patron saint,

'but who was the real Patrick? I'm on a quest to find out.

'I'd say mission but the big man might get upset.'

This would have been Patrick the Bishop.

-He's back. He's got a few years...

-He's back!

Yeah! This time it's personal!

You can see he's very different to Patrick the slave.

It's much warmer, shall we say, as I model bishop chic!

What else is different? It's a longer cut.

It's much longer and you have several layers on of wool and linen.

We know when Patrick comes back to Ireland

that there are already Christians here.

How would he have spread his message?

He deliberately chose areas that were not Christianised already.

Wild areas, probably, very difficult.

People in Ireland would have been aware of the Roman Empire

and would have been aware of the richness and prestige

attached to Roman culture.

The Roman religion that was Christianity was probably

appealing to people in that respect.

So on top of the glamour of Rome, he spoke the lingo.

Yes, but the Welsh language and Latin has a "P" sound in it,

-like his name, "Patrick".

-Yeah.

The native Irish couldn't pronounce "P" properly, we don't think.

They had a "cuh" sound where the Welsh had a "puh" sound.

So, for him in Ireland, his name would probably would have been

rendered as something like "Cuh-trick".

Even the most simple thing about St Patrick isn't as we thought.

We would not have called him Patrick.

We would have called him "Cuh-trick".

In his writings, Patrick seems to be defensive.

What sort of accusations did he face?

There's a defensive tone to parts of the Confessio.

It seems he was accused of financial impropriety.

Newly-converted women were placing their jewels

on the altar as offerings.

For two reasons it might have been frowned upon.

One - it was pagan practice.

Two - Patrick would have been seen to be profiting from his converting

of Christianity, and he flatly denies this.

How hard would it have been for Patrick to traverse Ireland?

They were probably travelling by foot, possibly on horseback

and maybe someone high status like Patrick

could have had access to a chariot.

TENSE LATIN CHORAL MUSIC

Dave, what evidence do we have that St Patrick would have ridden around

in a chariot like that?

We have his own words from his confession

which tell us the kind of travel that he made around Ireland.

He had to bring with him the king's sons as an escort.

Just to announce to the people that they knew who he was,

they knew the king's sons and he had permission to be there.

Patrick was very much an outsider coming in

and living by the rules of the Tuatha and tribal law.

Travel in those days at that expense is high status.

In the Gaelic world, the chariot is the heroic self-image.

That's high status. It's the way people wanted to be seen.

If I was trying to convert loads of people and was walking into a place

and they've never heard of me before, walking in is one way to do it.

Riding in on a chariot with 15 men behind you - best entrance.

It just says, "Hi, I'm Patrick. I'm here."

We have this image of Patrick traversing the country

converting people left, right and centre. Is that accurate?

Not at all.

We've no evidence that Patrick ever strayed beyond a line

that you could draw somewhere from Dublin to Galway or Mayo.

His mission is totally confined to the northern half of the island.

Is it accurate to say that he converted

thousands upon thousands of people?

Not thousands upon thousands upon thousands.

But certainly a lot of people, mainly at the ruling level.

He's going straight to what we might now call kings, the local despots,

the people who had power, economic power as well as political power.

They're already eating Roman food, dressing in Roman styles,

interested in Roman religious practices.

They're very receptive to somebody who speaks Latin

and comes from what they see as the civilised part of the world.

It's almost, for the ruling class, like a fashion statement.

There are two types of mission.

The missionaries who work with the homeless, outcast and poor.

We also have those like the Jesuits who set up universities

and work with the ruling class.

Which model of mission does Patrick take? The Jesuit model.

The question is - would the pagan Irish

have converted to other religions in the same numbers?

Depends on how they were proposed.

"I'd like to talk to you about Islam. There's only one god."

"Sounds good to me. "You can't drink."

HE CHUCKLES

"Or eat rashers and sausages." "No way!"

"I'd like to talk to you about Judaism. Only one god."

"Sounds good to me."

"We're going to have to cut the end off your penis."

"No way, thanks. No, no."

"I'd like to talk to you about Hinduism.

"There's loads of gods but you can't eat a burger."

"Why not?" "They're made of beef."

"Not in this country!"

St Patrick preached Christianity,

which is heavily reliant on the written word.

What influence had the spread of Christianity on literacy in Ireland?

Patrick brings a religion that is dependent on two books -

the Bible and a book that you're going to use for liturgy.

Now, if you're going to read those,

they're available in this society in Latin.

And this gives us access in Ireland

to the language that is common throughout Western Europe.

So this literacy gives us access to the whole culture of Western Europe.

Patrick ends the isolation of Ireland

which had not been part of the Roman Empire.

What might have been achieved had we been part of the Roman Empire

is achieved by Patrick in terms of bringing us into religious, social,

commercial, literary contact with the rest of Europe,

that hadn't been possible when we were outside the Roman Empire.

Literacy - that's not emphasised enough.

He promoted Christianity, Christianity promoted literacy

and that's the society we have now.

How am I doing here?

Em... well, it's what you'd call a "cursive script"

so that's a polite way of saying it's bad writing.

-Now, I notice you've got spaces between the words.

-Yeah.

That's probably cos you're Irish. The Irish are responsible for

-introducing spaces between words.

-In the whole world?

-Pretty much, yeah.

-In the whole Western world, the Irish did that.

-Why?

The Irish had no notion of Latin.

They were learning it as a foreign language, so they needed

to separate the words in order to understand what was going on.

So, there's some Irish fella going, "So, you invented words?"

"We invented the space between the words!"

Ah-ha-ha...

'Monks used to carry pocket gospels with abbreviations in them'

so the books could be kept short.

They could tell the story of Easter in just 22 letters.

You don't believe me?

JC DOA. JC AWOL. OMG. JC AOK. LOL!

LAUGHTER

Smiley face if you have space.

These are copies from the Book of Kells, some of my own artwork.

-You'll see the first thing about it, it's quite detailed.

-Yeah.

What they would have been using to get that detail was quartz stones.

If you hold it up, it's like a piece of glass - it magnifies it.

The inks they'd have been using - they would have spent every expense.

Kermes red is made from

a crushed, pregnant, Mediterranean Kermes beetle.

-Of course!

-So you've got to go to the Mediterranean,

you've got to find the right type of beetle,

you've got to make sure it's female and pregnant, crush it up.

It's the same stuff that goes into Coco Chanel lipstick.

How do you get the beetle to pee on a stick to tell if it's pregnant?

I don't know! You... I don't know!

You just have to ask around!

Rumours are being spread about the beetle and that's how you know!

-Find one that was in a scandal!

-OK, so that's red, that's brown,

-what about blue?

-The really expensive one

was made from this stuff - lapis lazuli.

When polished up, it's still used in jewellery today.

It's called ultra marine. This stuff was only found in one place

in the world at the time of the Book of Kells - northeast Afghanistan

and by the time it reached Ireland, it would have been dearer than gold.

This stuff was used so sparingly that it was only used generally for

two figures - Christ and the Virgin Mary. That's why when you still see

Catholic statues of the Virgin Mary, she's dressed in blue.

-Avatar must have been unbelievably expensive.

-Hugely.

-And the Smurfs.

TOGETHER: Braveheart!

What did the illustrations in the Book of Kells mean?

One of the most common ones you'd get are the four evangelists

who wrote the gospel - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

They're represented by a man, a lion, a calf and an eagle.

When they drew lions, it's basically a big, scary cat

or a big scary dog-like creature!

Because they couldn't nip down to Dublin Zoo and look at a lion.

What they were working on was vellum.

OK, now this is a calf skin.

It probably took 150-200 cows being slaughtered

to get enough pages for the Book of Kells.

The Book of Kells is made up of 185 calf skins.

I like to stand behind American tourists when they're looking at it

and pretend it's haunted...

"Mooooo!"

HIGH-PITCHED MOOING

(AMERICAN ACCENT) "Oh, my God, I can hear lowing!" "Mooo!"

"I can hear lowing! What does it mean?"

"Oh, they say only the special people

"can hear the calves of the Book of Kells!"

"What are they saying?" "They're saying, 'Please!

"'Please!

"'Buy something in the gift shop!'"

We should explain where we are. We are on Croagh Patrick,

the site that's most associated with St Patrick.

Is this originally a pagan site, though?

Well, at the end of July every year, as you know,

the pilgrims process up the mountain.

We think that it might have been a site of pre-Christian pilgrimage

on the festival of Lughnasa around the 1st August,

that's why it's still celebrated on the last Sunday in July.

And people walk up it in their bare feet like... like ONE of us!

-They do!

-One of the most authentic people,

rather than you with your lovely, shiny boots!

-Well, you're the devout Christian here, Neil!

-Yes, I am the bishop!

Are a lot of the sites associated with Patrick originally pagan?

Well, they wrote him very much into the mythology of places like Tara.

They have very ancient pedigrees going back

to the pre-Christian period and it was a way of carrying forward

the ancient tradition in this sort of new, Christian context.

The only item of clothing Patrick ever mentioned in the Confessio

-was his shoes, so... You haven't had shoes?!

-Why didn't you give me

the bloody shoes down at the bottom of the hill?!

The penance is good for you!

I can't believe you kept them! That is not funny!

That is not funny!

I nearly fell on my hole down there! And you had shoes in your bag?!

So, is this where Patrick banished the snakes from?

Well, it's funny you should mention that, actually...

-Because... Ah, Jesus!

-Is that a real snake?

-That's a real snake!

-Ah, here! OK, hold on.

-Try him on for size, he'll warm you up!

Oh, I don't like snakes.

When I was making this documentary, I had one rule - no snakes.

So, imagine my surprise as I was walking up Croagh Patrick

towards the chapel at the summit,

when Billy stopped, took off his backpack,

took a snake out and draped it around my shoulders!

Where's his head?

Can you not feel it there?

Oh... Yeah. Where is his head?

And I could hear a "hissss..."

It wasn't the snake, I'd pissed myself!

-What's his name?

-That's Diesel, the python.

-He's a python?

-Yeah.

-So, at some point he...

-Yeah.

I couldn't look at Billy. I couldn't look at the snake.

I looked over there and suddenly

I could just feel this tongue flick my ear!

And all I could think was, "Jesus Christ!"

"I hope that was Billy!"

I really don't want to turn around and see a snake's head just there

like some sort of evil Siamese twin!

I want to turn around and see Billy in the nip.

Having risked it all

on a fairly risky romantic, homosexual proposition!

At that point, I'd be like, "Thank God for that!"

"Kiss me quick, we can confess in the chapel.

"Let's make Croagh Patrick into Brokeback Mountain!"

You're a deeply sadistic man, aren't you?

Neil, you should suffer for your art!

We know that snakes didn't make it to Ireland after the Ice Age.

Ireland got cut off from Britain before they could make it over.

You do realise you could have said absolutely anything there?

You could have said he invented speed boats or briquettes,

and all I can think of is, "I've got a snake around my neck!"

What do you think the driving force

behind Patrick's mission to Ireland was?

Whatever happened to Patrick

when he returned to Britain after being a captive in Ireland,

he became utterly convinced that the end of the world was very close

and he believed the only thing that was preventing the return of Jesus

was there were some places out on the frontiers, even beyond

the frontiers of the empire, that hadn't heard of Jesus Christ.

And he thinks that if he announces the gospel there,

he is, as it were, the herald of the end.

That's them all done, my Lord. You may begin the day of judgment!

The very edge of the world, my Lord. Nothing more to be done!

I'm pretty sure that's everything.

I've been very thorough.

-Patrick would be shocked that we're here.

-Yeah!

He would have been surprised that his theology was so wrong.

Could you have left someone out?

Nah. I would have spotted another pagan.

-Are you sure?

-Yeah, I'm sure! I'm 100%.

There are no more pagans.

How can you be sure I'm the last one?

You must have forgotten someone.

Nah!

-Pat.

-Tony.

The Christian community in Ireland

see Patrick as a loose cannon.

He's a maverick. He's an oddball.

The Confessio is his complaint to these people.

It's a bit like a letter to the paper saying,

"Who are you to be giving out about me?

"I'm doing something completely different.

"The end is coming. My authority is coming straight from God."

-"To whom it may concern... Yours, etc. Patrick."

-Exactly.

So, if Patrick is so wildly off message,

-then why is he the poster boy for Christianity?

-To understand that,

you have to think of Ireland in the late 7th century.

It's an island full of petty kingdoms

and families warring with one another.

Muirchu and a few other churchmen

come up with the vision of "one island, one nation".

Then there's one people, one family. Then there shouldn't be fighting.

And if you're going to have a baptised nation,

you need someone to baptise us. For Muirchu, Patrick is an ideal person,

long ago, not linked with anyone,

not known too much, not associated with any one church.

He will baptise the nation. The one who baptises them is their apostle.

The apostles are those who will judge the 12 tribes of Israel.

If Patrick is the apostle of the Irish,

Patrick gets to judge the Irish at the end.

Myth suggests Patrick will judge the Irish at the end of time,

which is going to be brilliant - 7 billion people lined up

to be judged by God, and about 5 or 6 million of us lined up

to be judged by Patrick. It'll be like having priority boarding!

Just walking by the Chinese going, "Ah-ha-ha!

"That really didn't work out for ye, that one-child policy, did it?"

There'll be four big red leather chairs for the judges - St Patrick,

St Brigid, Colmcille and then Bressie!

Patrick will be reading CVs. "What's the name - Bertie Ahern?"

"Whoa! I should send you to purgatory

"but I sent Jackie Healy-Rae there 20 minutes ago

"and he's already got it rezoned.

"It's now Killarney west and has a leisure centre! Come back to me."

"What's the name? Ooh... Martin McGuinness. Whoa!"

"There's a lot of stuff here. Let's just go through the bullet points.

"Probably shouldn't have used that phrase!

"It's a game of two halves, I'll be honest. The '70s and '80s -

"not looking great. '90s and noughties - you did a lot.

"The thing is, Martin, I'm only judging Irish people

"and technically speaking..."

-AUDIENCE:

-Ooh!

"You should have seen your face, Martin! I'm only messin'!

"Go on outta that! You thought I was going to put you in the other queue

"over there with Rory McIlroy!"

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

He's very intense. Like, he's really driven.

He strikes me as the kind of Roy Keane of his day.

I'd imagine he would convert a pagan and not really enjoy it.

He wouldn't live in the moment.

He would go, "I have to convert the next pagan, and the next pagan..."

So, Patrick dies sometime between 463 AD and 493 AD

and this is where he's allegedly buried?

The hill here in Downpatrick is the traditional burial place of Patrick.

-How do we know he's actually buried here.

-Well, the Book of Armagh,

written a couple of hundred years after Patrick's death,

relates that he didn't die in Armagh

which is, of course, where they would want him to have been buried.

Patrick was buried here, and they had to find an excuse.

According to that book, his body was put on the back of an oxen cart.

And they seem to have been wayward cows

because obviously they should have gone somewhere in Armagh

but they took a wrong turn somewhere near Newry and apparently came here.

Well, those roundabouts are very confusing as well.

-They can be very confusing, yes!

-Particularly for cattle, like!

The gravestone was put here about 100 years ago because people used to

come and take a scoop of earth from St Patrick's grave for luck.

Bram Stoker, he came from Clontarf,

but he married a lady from Newcastle which is just down the road

and he heard of this tradition, and he incorporated it into

the Dracula story, so that Dracula has to travel with his own soil.

From what you've read and all your research,

what do you think of the man himself -

the historical guy, not the superman?

I think it's worth celebrating the real St Patrick

because he is a very interesting individual.

He's been a slave, there's this piracy involved in his stories.

He's truculent, he's very wilful.

He goes AWOL on the Church.

He comes here and decides he's going to create his own Church.

He's Sinead O'Connor, isn't he?

He's... He's very wilful! That's the word!

He was the poster pin-up boy of the early Christian movement.

He was the Donny Osmond of the early Christian movement.

You're showing your age! Let's say Justin Bieber, shall we?

Justin Bieber, OK!

What happens around these parts on March 17th to celebrate him?

As a community, we come out and lay a wreath here on St Patrick's grave.

And the parade itself - it's a small parade compared to Dublin.

But we have it as a cross-community festival.

What better role model for this part of Ireland

than someone from Britain who became the patron saint of Ireland?

You can't get any more cross-community than that.

PARADE MUSIC

So how do you get from Patrick the man to the modern-day parades?

The first parades are American-based.

You see in the 18th century, around 1730 - 1737 is a big date.

In Boston, there is a tradition where it's Irish guys

serving in the British Army.

They want to go for a few beers, it's their national day.

So they go and parade outside their commander's house.

They make a raucous noise. The commander comes out,

throws them a few pounds, they're off down the pub.

You can see how that would catch on!

If you're given money the first time you walk by and you can go

and get boozed up, this will be a thing you'll do every year.

Once the British leave in the middle of the 18th century,

you then see an Irish diaspora taking control of it.

It will be from a pub to the church for mass or on the way back.

I like the way they decided to have a parade on the routes

they were going to and from anyway! "We're going to the pub and mass.

"Might as well make a song and dance about it!"

Everything goes green for St Patrick's Day!

Landmarks are lit up green. Rivers are dyed green.

In border counties, even their diesel..!

LAUGHTER

And was green always the colour of St Patrick?

No, St Patrick's colour is blue.

Patrick's day used to be a different colour.

Green wasn't the colour.

-I'm pretty sure that's Pepsi and Santa Claus!

-No, it's not!

PARADE MUSIC

The parading tradition is kind of new in some ways to Ireland.

In the middle of the 19th century, after the famine,

you see bizarrely, it's actually a temperance movement who are

the first people to begin parading.

-That would seem like a bit of a...!

-It's a contradiction in terms.

From the 1920s, it's a military parade.

It's the Free State Army up and down O'Connell Street.

After the Second World War, the industrial parades.

All those images of the Guinness trucks, these kinds of things.

It's Irish industry being put on the street.

It changed dramatically in the late 20th century

when it became much more a marketing ploy for Failte Ireland,

for Guinness, selling Ireland as a brand.

We've got the snakes, we've got the shamrock, we've got the green,

all that paddywhackery, if you like.

But what we haven't got is any sense of a 5th century character

who brought Christianity to the Irish State.

Sham-rocks! Sham-rocks!

When I started this search, this pursuit of Patrick,

I thought I knew exactly what I'd find.

How wrong I was!

The real Patrick I think we should celebrate

because nobody knows him, really.

The Patrick who is talked about on March 17th is a different person.

In fact, he's not a person at all. He's a figment of the imagination.

He's a folk hero. He's a national hero in lots of ways.

Patrick is our first real voice from Ireland.

He's moving us from prehistory to history.

When you read his writings, you actually get into the psychology

and mindset of a 5th century Christian,

which is absolutely amazing.

He's relevant. That's the most important thing.

He's not just an historical figure.

Patrick comes before there's a division in the Church

between Catholic and Protestant.

No matter where you come from, Patrick is somebody

that we can all claim, that we can all own as our own, as our patron.

If we've learnt anything from this programme

it's that every generation - if it's 200 years after he died,

if it's the 1800s in America - Patrick belongs to all of us.

And what we do is we use whatever version of Patrick we need

for the time.

-Can you take this snake off me now?

-I suppose.