The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe

by Michael Pye

when Patrick arrived to convert Ireland in the fifth century, he had a head start. He was preaching the faith of the Book, carrying with him books of the law and the Gospels, and the Irish had their own habit of writing and reading already. They knew something about the technology. There are clues in the Irish law tracts written later, in the seventh century, which lay down that a contract can be proved by, among other things, ‘a godly old writing’, and witnesses can make a dead man’s agreement stand but only if they are not contradicted by relevant texts cut onto stones. Writing settles deep into Irish law.37 Much more remarkably, in his life of Patrick, the seventh-century monk Muirchú tells how the missionary found himself in a contest of magic with King Lóeguire’s druid. The king told the two to pitch their books into the water, and they’d see which god was worth adoring. The druid said he’d rather not because he knew about baptism and Patrick’s God was obviously a water god. It’s true that Muirchú was writing two hundred years later, and maybe he took for granted that the Irish had always had books because he had them himself, but the more likely story is literal: druids had some form of book, perhaps metal leaves, perhaps wood or stone, which could rival the Book. Patrick taught some men their alphabet to make them priests and bishops, but not all men needed the lessons.38