A Hymn on the Life, Virtues and Miracles of St. Patrick. Fiech Saint Bishop of Sletty
this Hymn Nein Thur, or Holy Tours, is rendered into Nemthur, as if the two words were but one, designating a place of that name. I
1
In the Latin translation accompanying Colgan's edition of this Hymn Nein Thur, or
2
Colgan, from the psalter of Cashel, traces back St. Patrick's pedigree to the 17th progenitor, thus:
From the names of the above list, if they could be depended on, it would appear that St. Patrick's ancestors were of Roman origin.
3
As Father Michael Clery, one of the annalists called the four masters was employed for fifteen years previously to the Anglo-Cromwellian invasion in collecting Irish manuscripts, and translating them into Latin for Colgan's Lives of the Irish Saints, it is very probable he was the translator of this Hymn into Latin at the same time. He was also the author of an Irish dictionary of difficult words. To the translation of such a scholar, made also at a time when the language was regularly studied in the seminaries of Ireland, great deference must be paid. In this third stanza, however, the editor has ventured to deviate from his version, which runs thus, according to the Latin words "St. Patrick was six years in slavery, during which he eat not the food of the (heathenish) people. For this reason he was called Cathraige, because he served four masters." Now, as
4
Instead of St. Patrick's running over the Italian "Alps," as the Latin translator affirms here, he travelled over all the mountains from the north to the south of Ireland, whence he took shipping for his native country; for