Seven Days Till St. Patrick’s Day – Part 7 of 7

Behold the words of St. Patrick of Wales and see how he conveys his humility:

But what is the point of excuses, however truthful, especially when linked with my audacity in aspiring now, in my old age, to what I did not acquire in my youth? For my sins prevented me from consolidating what I had previously read through. But who believes me even if I repeat what I have said before? As a youth, indeed almost a boy without any beard, I was taken captive, before I knew what to desire and what I ought to avoid. And so, then, today I am ashamed and terrified to expose my awkwardness, because, being inarticulate, I am unable to explain briefly what I mean, as my mind and spirit long and the inclination of my heart indicates.

Il Confessio. (Declaration of Patrick.) From St. Patrick – His Writings and Muirchu’s Life. Edited and Translated by A. B. E. Hood. Phillimore & Co. London. 1978. § 10, p. 43.

See also “Seven Days Till St. Patrick’s Day – Part 6 of 7.”

Seven Days Till Saint Patrick’s – Part 1 of 7

As I’ve currently undertaken a crash-course in Irish Literature, I’ll provide a quotation from an Irish author every day from today through St Paddy’s next week. The first quotation:

There is a war between the living and the dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it. They will have it that when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of the earth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their wisdom when the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make the trees wither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery in November, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes.

–William Butler Yeats, The Celtic Twilight. 1893. “The Queen and the Fool.”

See also “Seven Days Till St. Patrick’s – Part 2 0f 7“