News has been only barely heard, as this is written, about a sum of £6 million soon to be spent in Downpatrick, especially on the area around the grave believed to be that of St Patrick. Not everyone is certain that Patrick lies there. Padraic Colum has a touching story in his book Crossroads in Ireland (1930). "When he died many communities contended for the glory of having his burial in their grounds. Tradition says that leaving it to Providence to resolve their claims, the bier was laid on a wagon to which four white oxen were yoked; from the church that was his first foundation the oxen with their burthen were turned and were permitted to fare on without human direction. On a slope above the river Quoile they stayed and there the body of Patrick was laid in earth. A community grew up around the burial place ... The place is Downpatrick, now a good-sized town."
The church that was his first foundation is Saul. In 1900 Francis Joseph Biggar, noted antiquarian and general patron of so many learned and varied societies, had a rough granite slab, marked Patric, placed over the presumed grave. The writer Robert Bryans believed that this was to restrain pilgrims from taking soil from the grave place. He, Bryans, wrote in a travel book Ulster: A Journey through the Six Counties in 1964, that even this had not stopped the pious coming from the world over to collect soil from around the stone.
When he arrived at the scene, he writes, "A Californian nun was scraping up soil with a nail-file into a paper napkin". And the family asked him to take a photograph of them at the stone. "Wish they had put up a better marker" they said of poor old Bigger's granite. The same man showed endless generosity to all the Young Turks of the Gaelic Revival and the Dungannon Clubs and to many communities. The Shell Guide to Ireland was a bit sharp in describing the stone as "a bogus antiquity". No one claimed that this was a piece from early Christian history.
Gogarty in I follow St Patrick quotes: "He died at Saul. But he awaits at Down his resurrection? ... like a High King buried near his dun."
Down County Museum in the Mall of the town already has a Saint Patrick Heritage Centre, which will presumably benefit largely from this money. Will something be spent on the purely secular ... in memory of The Man From God Know Where? Thomas Russell, hanged in the town in 1803?