"Patrick - Ulster's Scottish Saint" - 2021 booklet project

(Today is All Saints' Day - this is a follow-up to my previous post). 

Back in 2021 this booklet was published, which I had written and designed, collating what feels like a lifetime of gathering up piles of information, some of which has appeared on this blog now and again. I was also helped by others who passed on to me relevant content that they had also come across over the years. The booklet was page-limited so not all of the content that I know of could be fitted in.

I'm thankful to the Ulster-Scots Agency for their help in publishing it, although - perhaps because it was mid-Covid - it didn't make the impact that I had hoped it would. Some who I thought would be interested, weren't.  Maybe it will be useful in time, on the run-in to the 1600th anniversary in 2032. Copies are hopefully still available from the Agency.

I had heard the folklore traditions growing up, as my mother's folk are from the Millisle area. The first major written 'find' that really lit me up was back in 2005 when I first read The Montgomery Manuscripts, the 1830 edition in particular. The manuscripts were written in the late 1600s by William Montgomery, a grandson of Sir Hugh Montgomery, and much of the content was based on first-hand accounts from older people who had been part of the settlement which began in 1606. William Montgomery wrote many other things, and one of the appendices was his 1683 Description of Ardes Barony, in the County of Down, which included this –

– “near this place are ye ruins of a small church, called Temple Patrick, where it is said St Patrick first landed in Ireland; there is his well also, and other traditions among ye Irish concerning it…”.

 

So, local Irish people passed on the Patrick tradition to the incoming Scots. However, this is NOT the earliest written reference. Below - and not featured in the booklet - is a detail of a map which the National Maritime Museum says is from c. 1595 and was based on Richard Bartlett's cartography. It includes the annotation "Temp: St Patricke" just south of "Temp: Donoghidie".

So, the Templepatrick tradition isn't an Ulster-Scots invention. It predates their arrival.

In recent years a Saint Patrick's Trail was devised with extensive public signage (but it often takes visitors to places that have no actual connection with Patrick's life and era, and doesn't go to other places which do!). Now there is a Columban Way Heritage Trail but the local website for it (link here) has short descriptions of the 13 sites along the trail with no reference to Columba / Columbanus at all. Those references could authentically be made at Movilla Abbey, Bangor Abbey and other places of worship around Bangor too.

It is curious that these saints have been used as mere marketing branding devices for various organisations, funders, local councils and tourism bodies - whereas the rock-solid actual recorded history at Templepatrick, and the associated folklore of the site too, causes hardly a ripple, even among supposed devotees. 

Below: the cover of a programme of a costumed reenactment event for the 1500th anniversary in 1932. Perhaps 2032 will see similar events and commemorations.