Tara of to-day is only a field or two of rich grass, covered with the trace of ancient earthworks--most curious of them the Banqueting Hall of King Cormac, a long narrow parallelogram--250 yards in length by 15 wide--with the fourteen openings of its doors still traceable, as they are shown in two plans preserved in very ancient Irish manuscripts. But for the detail of these monuments you must consult the plan in Mr. Cooke's admirable "Murray"; for some general account of the history of Tara I may refer to my own _Fair Hills of Ireland_. Here I single out only one thread in that vast fabric of associations.
[Illustration: ON THE RIVER BOYNE AT TRIM]
Looking north-east from Tara you will see easily (any child can point it out) another somewhat higher rise of ground, seven or eight miles distant--the Hill of Slane. That is where, on Easter Eve in the year 433, Patrick lighted the Paschal fire which gave menace and warning to the High King and his druids, keeping their state on Tara. It was a bold challenge, for a great druidic festival was in preparation, and no man in Meath was permitted to light a flame till Tara itself should give the beacon signal; and the night of that challenge is a marking-point in the history of Ireland--even in the history of the world.
For in that period of the fifth century, all Europe, as we know it to-day, was included within Rome's Empire, save for two exceptions--the outlying retreats of Scandinavia and of Ireland. Christianity was the religion of the Empire, the religion of civilization, and there is little doubt but that before Patrick's coming Christianity had got some footing in the south-eastern parts of Ireland, which were in closest commerce with Great Britain.
Patrick, by birth a Briton (almost certainly of Wales), was a Roman born in the same sense as St. Paul; his father was an official of the Empire; and from his father's house he was carried into captivity by these outer barbarians of Ireland. In his captivity he found his mission, escaped, with the fixed design to prepare himself for it, and spent thirty years on that preparation before, in 432, he came back to make captivity captive. He touched at a port in south-eastern Ireland--probably Wicklow--but stood on with his vessel, coasting past Dublin Bay till he landed again for water and provisions at the little island of Skerries, which since then is called Inishpatrick. Still north he sailed, up to Strangford Lough, where, landing, he made his first convert, the chief Dichu, and founded his first church--Down Patrick--where many years later he returned to die. Here for a time he sojourned. Before he turned south there was an errand he had to do, to bring his message to the valley of the Braid, in Antrim, where he had been a captive, herding swine on the slopes of Slemish. But at last, in the spring of 433, he set his face to the very core and centre of his purpose--the evangelization of Ireland at the fountain head of pagan civilization and pagan power. For the success of Patrick's mission lay in this. He addressed himself to the chiefs, he bearded the pagan in his strong places: he won those who carried others with them. That was the method he had learnt in more than a generation of labour, spent seeking knowledge throughout Europe "in the college of the Lateran at Rome, at Cecina on the Tuscan Sea, at Auxerre in Gaul", jealously profiting by his right as a citizen of the Empire, before the Empire should crumble, and knowledge and religion perish with it, under the redoubled assaults of barbarism. No man will despise the Hill of Slane who realizes what lay behind the kindling of Patrick's watchfire. I quote a passage from a great Irish writer, who had the gift of seeing things in their relations--the late Sir William Butler. It is from his last volume _The Light of the West_: