Latin in Post-Roman Britain – An Old Debate Revisited

By Gareth Griffith

The current orthodoxy among historians of post-Roman Britain would seem to be that Latin was spoken and written widely in the century or so after the departure of the legions in around 410. This applies with particular force in what is called the Lowland Zone, the region in the south of the country where villa civilization proliferated. 

The issue is significant, not least because former assertions of the widespread displacement and even genocide of the native British population were sometimes based in part on the lack of Brittonic loan-words in Anglo-Saxon (for example, Ronald Hutton, p 296). But if Latin was the most common language encountered by the incoming Germanic people, at least in lowland Britain, then such assertions must look to new and different evidence. 

An example of the contemporary approach is found in Guy Halsall’s 2013 book, Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, where language is only one part of a larger and novel re-interpretation of the period. Halsall challenges the assumption, “still more or less universal,” he claims, that the people the Anglo-Saxons encountered in the Lowland Zone spoke Brittonic or Brythonic. He argues that: “This is very rarely questioned but it is more than a little problematic, being based upon absolutely no evidence.” Halsall’s view is that, while Brittonic was indeed the main language of the highland regions, the same cannot be said of what he calls “the lowland villa-zone.” By analogy with northern Gaul, he maintains that, after 400 years of Roman rule, in this zone “the local Celtic language was replaced by low Latin.” If that was so, then the “Anglo-Saxons’ lack of contact with British speakers would be entirely unsurprising.”

According to Halsall:

If we look for Latin loan-words in Old English, we find hundreds: about as many as there are in Old Welsh. It is usually claimed that these words were introduced during the Anglo-Saxons’ conversion to Christianity, yet that argument is itself founded ultimately on two propositions. 

One proposition is that, because the British spoke Brittonic, these Latin loan-words could not have been introduced earlier. The other is that Christianity died out in the lowland region before Augustine’s mission in 597. “Neither assumption is secure,” Halsall asserts. 

A similar, if less categorical version of this argument is found in Nicholas J Higham’s most recent book, King Arthur: The Making of the Legend. His conclusion is that, “Latin was widespread in late Roman Britain, particularly in the Lowland Zone, and literacy along with it, but Celtic was still heard everywhere and was for many their first language – particularly in the north and west.” 

In Wales and the Britons 350-1064 TM Charles Edwards wrote that in 400: 

…many Britons then spoke Latin, though many of them would also have been able to speak British…In the sixth century, Gildas referred to Latin as ‘our language’, contrasting it with the Germanic of the Anglo-Saxon settlers. 

This language issue is not new. For that reason, it is worth looking at it in a wider context, that of the development of scholarly thinking on the Latin question. Taking a step back a few generations, therefore, the issue of the use of Latin in post-Roman Britain, from around 410 to 600, can be viewed through the prism of Kenneth Jackson’s seminal 1953 book, Language and History in Early Britain. 
In Chapter 3, in his discussion of Roman Britain, Jackson looked back at the state of scholarship in the late 19th century. He noted: 

Since it was a Roman province, like the others [Gaul and other provinces], the natural tendency was to assume a priori, that Latin was the regular language everywhere, except for a few remote half-barbarous peasants who may have clung to their Celtic tongue in the East and (because of the existence of Welsh and Cornish) admittedly must have done so in the West. 

Jackson then commented that since the First World War, with the growing “interest in the Celtic side of all questions,” the pendulum swung the other way, possibly “a little too far.” Taking recent developments into account, Jackson presented a nine-point summary of the “probable situation” of the Latin and British languages in Roman Britain, as follows:

Latin was the language of the governing classes, of civil administration and of the army, of trade, of the Christian religion, and very largely (but perhaps not entirely) of the people of the towns. The rural upper classes were bilingual; the peasantry of the Lowland Zone, who constituted the great bulk of the population, spoke British and probably spoke little Latin; and the language of the Highland Zone (apart from the army and its native camp followers) was to all intents and purposes exclusively British. 

On this account, the speaking of Latin “coincided roughly with the ability to read and write,” making it largely “a polite tongue of the upper classes,” which for Jackson accounted for the “peculiarities of British Vulgar Latin.” On a technical note, Jackson was of the view that the superior British Latin from which loan words in Brittonic were derived was “quite different in certain important respects from Continental Vulgar Latin.” He estimated that Latin remained the “official” language up until around 450, after which it found refuge for a time in the Highland Zone; in the same period, the “British language came into its own among the upper classes in the Lowland Zone, as it had always been among the lower.”

Armed with this interpretation, Jackson then proceeded in Chapter 6 to analyse in more detail the situation in post-Roman Britain, as regards the influence of Latin on Anglo-Saxon. Jackson’s main point of departure was the work of the German scholar K Luick (Historische Grammatik der Enlischen Sprache, 1914). Luick divided Latin words in Anglo-Saxon into two main groups, as follows: firstly, popular oral borrowings from colloquial Vulgar Latin, which were early and almost all taken to belong to pre-Christian times; and secondly learned loan words, chiefly from the ecclesiastical spoken and written in Latin, which were late and subsequent to the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.

The first early group, Luick further divided into two classes: (1) those loanwords adopted on the Continent by the West Germanic peoples during the Empire and inherited by the Anglo-Saxons prior to their coming to Britain; and (2) those loanwords which came into Anglo-Saxon between around 450 and the 7th century. Distinguishing between these two classes of loan words was far from straightforward, with Jackson describing the criteria for words in the (2) class as “vague and unreliable.” There was also the question of the extent of Anglo-Saxon intercourse with the Continent in this period, which could well have meant that some Latin words were derived from the spoken Latin of Gaul. He continued:

…the existence of the group (2) loanwords cannot be taken as positive proof that Latin was at all widely spoken in the Lowland Zone of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. 

In 1939, Sir Ivor Williams had argued that the larger number of borrowings from Latin than from Brittonic into Anglo-Saxon was evidence that the Lowland Zone was Latin rather than Brittonic in speech. Jackson disagreed:

But even if all the group (2) loanwords were adopted in Britain (and it is possible that none or almost none of them were), it would still not be safe to come to any such conclusions, because we are dealing with such small figures on both sides – about eighteen Brittonic versus a round two dozen Latin at most – that proportions are of little significance.  

Jackson went on to say:

Besides, assuming that the Latin words were taken over in Britain, some such relative number is only what would be expected, for Latin was the speech of an admired and superior culture, with expressions for ideas not existing in Germanic…. 

The conclusion arrived at by Jackson was that: “although it does not prove anything for certain, the heavy accumulation of negative evidence does seem to suggest strongly that the English met very few people who talked any sort of Latin at all during the course of the occupation of Britain.”

From this account, it would seem that Jackson’s views are not consistent with those of such contemporary historians as Guy Halsall whose argument is, in part, based on the evidence of Christian loanwords, which he claims were pre- and not post-600.

A number of questions and observations follow. One question is how persuasive is that element Halsall’s argument, bearing in mind that even if ecclesiastical words were imported early into Anglo-Saxon, many of these could very easily have been loaned from the Latin of Gaul. After all, modern historians are inclined to take a less insular view of this period of British history, with a new focus on links between the Anglo-Saxons and the continent of Europe. Moreover, even if British Christianity did endure in the Lowland Zone, might it not have been the case that Latin was primarily, if not exclusively, the language of the church, as it proved to be subsequent to the conversion?

More broadly, are contemporary interpretations of the prevalence of Latin in post-Roman Britain based on new evidence, sufficient to set aside the obvious counter arguments. If so, what is the nature of this evidence? Is it archaeological? Does it rest on new linguistic interpretation of a technical nature? Discounting Christian loanwords, Jackson counted a mere two dozen Latin imports into Anglo-Saxon in the period 450 to 600. Have more now been identified? For Jackson, the evidence was still largely a priori, which is to say based on deduction, using inference and analogy in place of inductive empirical proof. How far advanced are we since 1953 along the inductive route as far as the language question is concerned? Whereas other questions may lend themselves more to the archaeological and other tools available to contemporary research, language would appear to be a more recalcitrant customer, leaving room for continuing doubt and debate. The less than categorical conclusions reached by Nicholas J Higham would seem to indicate as much.

From Kenneth Jackson to the contemporary historians cited, there would seem to be broad agreement that Latin was the language spoken by the reading and writing classes of the Lowland Zone; that is, the administrators, traders, the army and the like. The difficult question is how far down the social scale did Latin reach? Was Latin the more or less universal language of the Lowland Zone in Roman and, for a time, in post-Roman Britain? Is there a case to be made, as Jackson thought, for bilingualism, at least outside the cities of Southern England? If bilingualism did endure in the country areas, did it conform to the model of social hierarchy suggested by Jackson? Was it the case that Brittonic displaced Latin in the 5th century as the spoken language of all classes of the native population in the former Lowland Zone? Alternatively, was Latin still the dominant language, to be replaced ultimately by Anglo-Saxon? For Gildas, writing in the 6th century, Latin was still “our language.” But then, Gildas was writing in a rhetorical vein, very much from an educated, Christian standpoint.

One thing we can say with assurance is that Kenneth Jackson was of the view that the evidence he had at hand in 1953 did not “prove anything for certain.” Has much changed in the intervening 66 years? It seems the language question will not go away. It has long been and still remains an important aspect of any analysis of the post-Roman era.

Reading
Kenneth Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain, Edinburgh University Press 1953
Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain, Yale University Press 2014
Guy Halsall’s 2013 book, Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, Oxford University Press 2013
Nicholas J Higham, King Arthur: The Making of the Legend, Yale University Press 2018
TM Charles Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350-1064, Oxford University Press 2013

Images
A replica of the Old Roman Cursive inspired by the Vindolanda tablets, the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain - public domain via Wikipedia
Historische Grammatik der Enlischen Sprache, 1914 Image from Internet Archive.Org
Statue of Saint-Gildas. It on the shore line in a small bay near the "Grand-Mont" (Morbihan, France) Via Wiki commons

~~~~~~~~~~

Originally from Penmaenmawr, North Wales, Gareth Griffith now lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife Sue.

His career has encompassed teaching, research and writing, including many years working as the manager of research for the parliament of New South Wales. He has a PhD from the University of Wales. His academic publications include a study of George Bernard Shaw's politics, published by Routledge, and several publications on the study of parliament and constitutional law.

 These days, when Gareth isn’t writing, he enjoys reading, music, dark Scandi film and TV, and Dark Age Britain. Glass Island is his first historical novel.

Shamrocks, Snakes, Maewyn Sucat and the Wearing of the Green: The Making of Saint Patrick

By Linda Root

The historic Saint Patrick can be hard to find:

Seeking insight into the historical figure we know as Saint Patrick, is more a lesson in historiography than biographical research. It can be a far more arduous endeavor than merely separating the man from the myth. It is every bit as much a quagmire as tracing the origin of the historical Arthur, and equally controversial. More than fifteen hundred years after his celebrated date of death, grown men and women of academic celebrity are duking it out over his origin in a style more common to the pubs of Dublin on Saint Patrick’s Day at closing time than the hallowed halls of Cambridge. One eminent historian, Cambridge Professor David Dumville, cites a remark of a colleague that ‘in Patrician studies scholars have left no stone unthrown.’[i],[ii]

When I elected to write my March post about Saint Patrick, I had no idea I had stepped into an academic brawl which still rages, in spite of Professor Dumville’s assertions to the contrary.  With that comment out of the way, there is one fact about Saint Patrick about which there is no controversy:  There is scant in common between the historical and the mythic Sanctus Patricius, or the holiday celebrating him.

Grandpa had it wrong: 

Henry C. Patterson and his granddaughter.

Every year of my early life in Cleveland, on March 17^th my grandfather Henry Clay Patterson would don a top hat and march in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.   I wonder what he would say if he had known Saint Patrick was likely born a Scotsman. While there are several locations along the coast of the Irish Sea and the English Channel, which claim him, Western Scotland near Dumbarton is a current favorite, unless, of course, you are Welsh. Some modern scholars go so far as to suggest that Patrick was born in Brittany. 
A brief overview of the powerful symbolism surrounding the patron saint of Ireland uncovers more passion on the part of the various claimants to Saint Patrick’s past than those who write about his achievements.

There are some other surprising facts concerning Saint Patrick about which there is no quarrel. For example, his birth name was not Patrick. He was born Maewyn Sucat, and he was not Irish  He was more than likely British, although even that is subject to debate. There is controversy as to the proper definitions of the words  Brittania or Brittanii as they appear in early histories. At least one competent writer, Marcus Losack, makes a good argument that the saint’s ancestors fled Roman Scotland for Bretagne (Britany) when the Romans withdrew, which, of course, is on the northwest coast of France. Losack's hypothesis would explain but not resolve Maewyn Sucat’s familiarity with what linguists call Early Living Latin. There is good evidence the saint did not learn his  Latin in the Roman Catholic Church.[iii] While some historians conclude he had traveled to Gaul to prepare for his ministry, others speculate he may have been born there. Well-regarded Late Latinist scholar Christine Mohrmann finds 'There are in the language of Saint Patrick many elements of living Late Latin which cannot possibly be traced back to British Latin. Therefore, we must allow for a contact of Patrick with the Continent.’[iv] How and when that may have occurred is another topic for debate.

If not Irish, who was Maewyn Sucat?

There are as many factions struggling to construct a claim to the Irish saint as there are battling over the origin of  Arthur Pendragon. A survey of the literature suggests the Arthurians are more civilized than the Patricians. In his short biography[v], Daniel Colston says: 'The mythical Patrick was created because history was not yet discovered as a science in the 7th century and writers of history were more concerned with a good story.’ 

Even a brief survey of the literature reveals historians are not always civil when  they disagree. Although Professor Dumville declares the debate has died down with the death of the most aggressive of the combatants, he obviously has not read his colleague Barbeiri's acerbic review of Dumville's book on Amazon.

Daniel Colston, in his short biography, reminds us the traditional images of Saint Patrick, with shepherd’s cross and mitered hat, is a fiction of the Holy Roman Church. Saint Patrick lived in the 5^th century, hundreds of years before Catholic bishops costumed themselves in that manner. While most historians agree Saint Patrick was a member of an early British Christian sect, he was not Catholic in the classical sense. Colston has him born on the southwestern coast of Roman Britain, to an aristocratic family. The language in his village would have been Latin. The Angles and the Saxons came much later. Other sources place his family home in Strathclyde, Scotland, and some favor Wales. Strathclyde seemed rather far north for a lad who spoke Latin.  But with evidence surfacing indicating the Romans had a garrison at or near Carlisle, the Scots are currently back in the game. Others argue in favor of Brittany. While Patrick’s own writings should be dispositive of questions concerning his vital statistics, they are not. In his Confession, he calls his birthplace Bannavem Tiburniae but does not place it geographically. His writing discusses his spiritual birth, not his mortal one.

How Maewyn Sucat got to Ireland: Blame it on the Pirates

Wherever it may have been, Maewyn Sucat’s homeland was the site of frequent raids by the Irish king ‘Niall of the Nine Hostages’. Marcus Losack, in his recent book Rediscovering Saint Patrick: A New Theory of Origins at Kindle Location 206,  is convinced the future saint lived in a family estate on the coast of Brittany and was captured when he was age sixteen by Niall’s raiders. Patrick’s writing confirms the kidnapping and his age at the time, but not the locale. A folk history of inhabitants at the location Losack pinpoints talks of a family of Scottish origin which had fled to Bretagne when Roman troops withdrew from Britain to protect Roman holdings in France. However, Losack’s explanation is only one of many that fits if you so desire. Other sources have adolescent Maewyn carried off from an area near Dumbarton, which supports a Scottish birth. One recent historian has suggested the controversy is caused by Saint Patrick’s parents hailing from Scotland but having a vacation home on the coast of France.  Except in the minds of certain partisan academics, the puzzle remains unsolved.

Wikimedea Commons-
Solway Firth north of Carlisle

Maewyn Sucat and Ireland:

All versions of Saint Patrick’s story including his own work, Confession, place his capture and abduction at or near the dawn of the fifth century, circa A.D. 400. Raids by Irish slavers were apparently common. While accounts are not specific, including the one written by Patrick himself, it seems he was sold to a sheep owner and was forced to tend flock in an inhospitable, remote location, possibly in County Mayo, which for those of you who do not know your Irish geography, is a long, long way from the spot where the Clyde flows into the Irish Sea.

At some point during the six years of his captivity, the future Saint Patrick experienced an epiphany. Not only did he abandon his name, but also his way of life. Perhaps due to the remoteness and the isolation from his friends and family, Maewyn Sucat became spiritualized. He also learned the language and some of the cultural traits of his captors. Authorities are mixed as to the nature and strength of his religion during the sixteen years before he was seized but agree he was not Catholic in the orthodox sense. This does not mean he had not been closely affiliated with a religious community in the land of his birth.  In his writings, he implies his father was a public official and perhaps a deacon in a nascent Christian church. While Maewyn Sucat may have been earmarked for the priesthood, nowhere in his early life is there evidence of the deep religious fervor that came later.

Little is known of Saint Patrick’s circumstances during his captivity. When he wrote about it later, he focused on his spiritual awakening.  He is not the first nor the last of his kind to have found his God in the wilderness and received divine revelations in the form of dreams. In one of them, voices told it was time for him to leave - a ship was waiting to take him home. According to his own account, although he was far from a seaport, he had enough confidence in the dream to walk for days. Says Saint Patrick: 

’It was not nearby, but a good two hundred miles away. I had never been to the place, nor did I know anyone there. So I ran away then, and left the man with whom I had been for six years. It was in the strength of God that I went - God who turned the direction of my life to good; I feared nothing while I was on the journey to that ship.’[Colston, Daniel, Ibid, (Kindle Locations 161-163).

When he arrived, he found a ship with a crew willing to give him passage home, wherever home may have been.  

Maewyn Sucat returns to his homeland: The Lost Years

Few facts are known of Saint Patrick’s history for the next several years. While Some writers infer his immediate family had been slain at the time of his kidnapping, Saint Patrick in  Confessions talks of his reunion with his parents, who urge him never to leave again. Apparently there were three significant religious characters named Patrick in the fifth-century timeframe. The account of the murder of his family may relate to another Patrick. In the mid-twentieth-century, there was significant support for a Two-Patricks Explanation. Nevertheless, from his own writing, the Patrick the subject of this review  was reabsorbed into the political and religious community from whence he came. Again, what we learn from the written words of our protagonist, albeit of suspect translation, has more to do with his faith than his surroundings. One fact is clear: His experience in captivity in Ireland had changed him.
  

In a popular rendition of Confessions, the man who became Saint Patrick speaks of joyous days with his parents. Other evidence suggests he may have traveled to Gaul to prepare for the spiritual life he had embarked upon in Ireland. He had become a Man of God and was expecting God to call him to a mission. Then came a time when his dreams came more specific.  He heard voices he identified as the collective voice of the Irish People.

‘“We beg you, holy boy, to come and walk again among us.” This touched my heart deeply, and I could not read any further; I woke up then. Thanks be to God, after many years the Lord granted them what they were calling for. Another night – I do not know, God knows, whether it was within me or beside me – I heard authoritative words which I could hear but not understand, until at the end of the speech it became clear: “The one who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks in you”; and I awoke full of joy.’[vi]

There is some evidence not all of the leaders in his early church were excited to send him back. Apparently one of his lifelong friends had betrayed a childhood secret which tarnished Patrick’s image. In his writings, Patrick admits to an unspecified sin committed in his youth. But when he made it clear he intended to return to Ireland with or without the blessings of the hierarchy of his church, they reluctantly endorsed his mission to Ireland. Mayhap they wanted to be rid of him. Substantial evidence exists in Papal archives indicating Pope Leo the Great had already sent an alternative Patrick to Ireland, known to history as Palladius, who may have been Patrick’s predecessor and might have been his alter-ego. During the middle Twentieth Century, a historian questioned if the discrepancies in Patrick's history emerged because there were actually two of them. A parallel  debate still rumbles if not rages as to the extent of the Christian presence before 431, or the degree of convergence of the stories of the two bishops. Perusal of the evidence suggests the existence of a somewhat limited Christian church presence in Ireland prior to either Palladius or Patrick, and concedes the possibility of confusion between their separate missions. Late developing evidence suggests Palladius was indeed a bishop sent by Rome, but due to the expansion of Anglo-Saxon power in Britain in the latter half of the fifth century, the Roman Church abandoned the Irish mission to the British church after Pallaadius died. Rome had troubles enough without concerning itself with the Irish.

Saint Patrick preaching to an Irish King atTara

Mitered Hat, Shamrocks and other Shams:

One of Saint Patrick’s biographers has stated that Patrick’s intimate association with Jesus and the Messianic Message was precisely what the wild Irish needed to hear. Like the Jews of ancient Palestine, they were a downtrodden people badly in need of a hero—a Deliverer. By revealing Jesus in a messianic role, Saint Patrick led thousands upon thousands of the Irish to embrace Christianity. Some of his converts were kings. Christian, including Catholic, doctrine was in flux. His own beliefs were not Catholic in the classical sense. They were early Christian, centered on the existence of Jesus, and not the glory of the nascent Catholic Church. Patrick was a strict Trinitarian, and his teachings stressed the separate natures of the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. He understood and used scripture and symbolism in his ministry, which is likely where the Shamrock legend comes into the story. He may have drawn three circles in the dirt with his staff, and others might have thought it resembled a shamrock, but there is no evidence the saint used a shamrock in his teachings. The significance of the Shamrock is its exclusivity to Ireland, at least until modern times.

The origin of the legend of the snakes is evident in its simplicity. There are no snakes in Ireland: Why not give credit to Saint Patrick with eradicating them? And what about the paintings and sculptures and stained glass windows of the Irish saint? They represent an awe inspiring Catholic Saint, but certainly not Saint Patrick. Even Roman bishops did not adopt the mitre until the eleventh century. And yet, it is almost universal in depictions of Saint Patrick. Again, the answer is obvious. The Roman Church was claiming him as one of its own.

The Catholic Icon

Somehow in the midst of snakes and shamrocks and mitres, we have forgotten that Saint Patrick had learned their language during his captivity, and sustained an intense dialog with common Irishmen. He also stood toe to toe with kings. He spread the Christian doctrine as Jesus did, to the masses, not always from the pulpit.  He converted many kings and publicly chastised a British warlord king for his bloodlust and sinfulness. Yet, more is written of his origin than his acts.

Which brings us to the topic of Saint Patrick’s Day - a very secular holiday in its modern interpretation.

CONCLUSION:  Saint Patrick’s Day is a celebration of being Irish

Other than its name, Saint Patrick’s Day has little to do with the historic Saint Patrick but focuses upon our own real or feigned Irishness, which we demonstrate by wearing green or risk being pinched. We find our way to an Irish pub or a gathering of real or pseudo-Irish friends, fill up with corned beef and cabbage, after which we sing  "A Little Bit of Heaven” or “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” while lifting a pint of green beer. And some of us shed a tear.

Photo by the author.

And to us, it doesn’t matter where Maewyn Sucat was born. He died Irish. The degree to which he changed the spiritual face and the destiny of a nation of people who in diaspora, have impacted the history of the modern world is left to the quibbling of historians. Methinks it would be a worthy endeavor for them to write more about Saint Patrick’s mission, and less about his origin.



For those who are interested in Saint Patrick’s beliefs as revealed in his words, no matter how suspicious the translation, Confession is available on Amazon at the link listed in the author’s notes.  It is noteworthy that the emphasis on Patrick as a missionary is most often depicted on the covers of children’s books. Perhaps that is a good start in separating the Saint from the stained glass image of the man in the mitered hat.

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK’S DAY, ONE AND ALL!

A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION FROM THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

Recently, my own life took a turn not so different than that of the mythic Saint Patrick: There was never any question that Henry Clay Patterson considered himself true Irish, although many who share his surname are Ulster Irish, deported from the Highlands during the 17^th Century. His family was established in Maryland before the American Revolution. They were avid Episcopalians. In any event, there is good reason to believe my Patterson ancestry was Scottish.

But that is not all. My paternal grandmother’s name was Amy Jameson. You don’t get much more Irish than that unless your name is Guinness. However, last year we discovered the spelling of her surname was changed in the 1920’s when her sister became a sports executive in Cleveland—a very Irish town in those days. The surname Jameson was a career move. Alas, just like Maewyn Sucat, my grandmother Amy was a Scot, the daughter of Alexander Jamieson, of the Clan Gunn. I wonder if he was born in Strathclyde. I realized as I concluded my post that March 18^th, tomorrow, is the 55^th anniversary of my grandfather’s death.  He did not march in a parade that year, but on the night he died, I was present when he did a jig. 

 AUTHOR’S NOTE:   

A Kindle edition of Confession is available on Amazon for 99cents. The trade paperback is 6.99. Like most published versions of the Confession, even the earliest, questions arise as to the accuracy of the translation. St.Patrick’s Latin was not the liturgical Latin spoken by priests of the Roman Catholic church. It was a language spoken in his home and his community. Irish was his second language. We do not know what variance may exist between the Latin taught in schools and the vernacular Latin spoken in Roman Britain of the fifth century. With that caveat, here is the LINK:


Photos not otherwise attributed are from Wikimedia.com through Creative Commons. Maps courtesy of Sansculotte - German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=459238

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  

Linda Root is the author of six historical novels set in Marie Stuart’s Scotland and the Early Jacobean years, including The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots, and the four books of the Legacy of the Queen of Scots Series: 1) The Midwife’s Secret-The Mystery of the Hidden Princess; 2) The Other Daughter- Midwife’s Secret II; 3) 1603: The Queen’s Revenge and 4) In the Shadow of the Gallows. The fifth in the series, The Deliverance of the Lam in coming this autumn. Root is a former prosecutor and a veteran of more than a hundred twenty jury trials. She lives in the high desert community of Yucca Valley, on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park. In addition to being a regular contributor to EHFA, she is active at The Review blogspot and a Board Member of the M.m.Bennetts Award, an inactive member of the State Bar of Califoria, and a member of the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. Visit her author page on Amazon Author Page 

[i] Dumville, David, Saint Patrick A.D.493-1993, The Boydell Press, Suffolk, 1993, 1999, from the Forward contained in the front material.

[ii] It is interesting that Dumville claims the most vociferous of the combatants in the battle over Patrick’s origin to be dead at the time he published his book in 1993. His assertion is presumptuous. He should read the review his less than congenial colleague Italian historian and cartoonist F. Barbieri has posted on Amazon, calling Dumville an academic possessed of ‘an unconstructive attitude,’ who enjoys putting down the theories advanced by others.

[iii] Lossack, Marcus, Rediscovering Saint Patrick, A New Theory of Origin, Columba Press, Dublin, 2013.

[iv] Quoted from The Latin of Saint Patrick, p.50, by Dumville, op. cit. St.Patrick’s Missing Years, p 25.

[v] Colston, Daniel, SAINT PATRICK AND THE PRESENCE OF GOD: A Short Biography, North Garden Publishing Company, on Kindle

[vi] From Colston’s account and others.