ST. PATRICK AND THE SNAKES.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 61, 8 February 1884, Page 3

ST. PATRICK AND THE SNAKES.

The legend of Patrick and the snakes does not appear to belong to the well-known Aryan family of hero-and-dragon myths, wherein the huge single monster is not banished but slain, and human prowess rather than Divine potency is illustrated. The Patrick serpentmyth bears a nearer resemblance to certain Egyptian tales, as that of Setnare (“ Records of the Past,” iv. p. 129), who obtained the magic book of Thoth, whose powers he exercised, by killing one “ little serpent" among the many reptiles and scorpions which guarded it, the rest, apparently, taking to flight. There is a legend mentioned by Josephus that Moses cleared a region in Ethopia of snakes. Geoffrey Keating’s “History of Ireland,” published early in the seventeeth century, however uncritical, is known to contain traditions of extreme antiquity, and extracts from MSS. not accessible ; and in it are materials of high value to comparative mythology. The legend here is that Prince Gadelas, grandson of the Pharaoh who pursued Israel, being bitten by a serpent, was taken to Moses, who, with a touch of his rod, healed the wound. Moses also prophesied that wherever this prince, or any of his posterity, should reign, there should be no more serpents. The Gadelians having taken possession of Ireland, the snakes disappeared. “ Some, I confess,” says Keatinge, “are of opinion that there were serpents in Ireland till St. Patrick arrived to propagate Christianity in that country; but this assertion depends upon the figurative manner of expression, which is to be understood of devils or infernal spirits, that may be properly called serpents, and were expelled the island by the piety and preaching of this saint.” According to another tradition, told me by a well-informed Irish lady, Gadelas brought with him Moses’s identical serpent (either the rod or the brazen serpent) which ate up all the snakes in Ireland, I have also heard a folk-tale of the last of the expelled serpents, that he was so huge that St. Patrick had great difficulty with him ; when the exorcism prevailed the tail of the monster was seen uncoiling from his cave near Dublin, while his head was passing out of Cork harbour. In the Devon legend of St. Petroc (probably St. Patrick) the huge size

of a serpent similarly sent to sea in attributed to its having swallowed all the snakes of a ph into which the Christian martyrs warp ibjown!—Nerm dtnsriedH Xeriiw*