PREFACE.

The present volume has three objects in view: first, to present the
life of Saint Patrick without writing a history of the national church
which he founded or introducing irrelevant matter; secondly, to place
his life and character before the reader as they have been handed down
to us in the most ancient extant documents, without overcoating or
withholding anything in the originals; and, thirdly, to deliver to the
public at as low a price as possible the original documents grouped
together.

At first I had intended to present the Seven Lives of St. Patrick as
published by Colgan; but, to my knowledge, there is no copy of the
_Acta Triadis Thaumaturgae_ in this country, and the four lives which I
have omitted--that is, by Benignus, Patrick Junior, Eiselan the Wise,
and Probus--are of little consequence. The metrical life by St. Fiech
is undoubtedly the most ancient and the most removed from saintly
imaginings of miracles. The other two, that by Saint MacEvin and that
by Jocelin, appear to have been elaborate compendiums of stories
written in antecedent ages, and extant in their time, concerning Saint
Patrick. Of the life by Saint Fiech I have made a rude translation
corresponding with the original; of the Tripartite I have given
Professor Hennessy's version; and of the extraordinary biography by
Jocelin I reproduce, for the first time in this country, the rendering
from Colgan by Mr. Swift, as published by the Hibernia Press Company,
at Dublin, in 1809. Colgan's Latin version of the Life of Saint