On Mon, 4 Sep 2000 ocorrain@esatclear.ie wrote:
But do remember that St Patrick wasn't Irish at all. He was an English boy, stolen by Irish pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland.
De-lurking briefly to correct this...
Oooooo Shows what happen when you post casually to the cypherpunks list ;-) You are right. I should have said that he was a British lad.
St Patrick was a Romano-Briton. There were no English in Britain at the time he lauched his Irish mission. There was no English language, and certainly no English identity. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes that make up the English (an identity that only established itself when the Franco-Norman ruling dynasty in England lost its territories in France) were spread across Germany and Denmark at the time.
But this is mostly just laziness. When Patrick didn't do what he was told, I'm sure that his masters made no effort to learn his language. They just shouted at him louder in Gaelic.
Patrick would have spoken Gaelic or Latin as his first language. The Irish would have been no more difficult to understand than a Californian to a Noo Yawker. The upper echelons of Irish society may even have spoken Latin.
Several authorities, eg the Cathoic Encyclopedia, say that St Patrick became fluent in the language of the Irish while in slavery. Some claim that he was born in Scotland, some say in Wales. None support your suggestion that the language of his masters was his native tongue. The real point here is that the Irish, generally portrayed as victims of the British, were sometimes victims, sometimes villians -- like most everybody else. PS. I am immensely fond of Ireland; me mother is Irish, in fact ;-) -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015