difficulty is
to be found in the word Bonaven. Bon, or Ban, he tells us, is a Celtic
word which signifies the mouth of a river, and Avon is the river
itself. From this, he argues that the Saint was born at a town which
once stood on the present site of Hamilton, which is situated at the
mouth of the Avon, just where that river discharges itself into the
Clyde. The same argument would apply with equal force to a town
situated at the mouth of the River Aven on the French coast, which
flows into the harbour of Concarneu in Brittany.

Anyone who accepts the authority of Probus, who asserts that Bonaven
Tabernise "was not far from the Western sea," or of the Scholiast, who
is the author of the Dumbarton theory, will see a grave objection to
accepting the Cardinal's solution of the problem: Hamilton is about
fifty miles distant from Dumbarton, and far away from the Atlantic
Ocean.

None of the authors mentioned make any attempt to reconcile the two
contradictory statements of the Scholiast: (1) that St. Patrick was
born at Dumbarton, and (2) that he was captured in Armorica. They have
failed to notice that, if the Saint was captured in Armorica, he could
not have been born at Dumbarton, because he assures us in his
"Confession" that he was captured at his father's home. Even according
to the admissions of the Scholiast, therefore, Bonaven Tabernise, St.
Patrick's home, was situated in Armorica. Usher, Ware, and Cardinal
Moran, while contending that the Apostle of Ireland was born in North
Britain, refuse to accept the Scholiast's statement that he was a
native of Dumbarton.

ST. PATRICK WAS NOT BORN IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Ignoring altogether both the Scotch and Welsh theories as to the
birthplace of St. Patrick, Professor Bury, in his Life of the Saint,
holds that Ireland's Apostle was born in a village named Bannaventa;
not, however, Bannaventa now known as Daventry in Northamptonshire,
seeing that that town would be too far "from the Western sea," but
another Bannaventa somewhere on the sea coast, and "perhaps in the
region of the Severn" (chap, ii., p. 17, and Appendix, 323).

The whole of Professor Bury's new theory rests on a very faint
similarity between Bonaven or Bannaven--the name which the Saint gives
to the town of his birth--and Bannaventa; and on an entirely gratuitous
assumption that there must have been a town named Bannaventa "in the
regions of the lower Severn."

Professor Bury is recognised as a very ab