e earth, utterly renounced and abjured the
eating of flesh-meat, even through the rest of his life; and he humbly
besought the Lord that He would manifest unto him His pardon by some
evident sign. Then the angel bade Patrick to bring forth the hidden
meats, and put them into water; and he did as the angel bade; and the
flesh-meats, being plunged into the water and taken thereout,
immediately became fishes. This miracle did St. Patrick often relate
to his disciples, that they might restrain the desire of their
appetites. But many of the Irish, wrongfully understanding this
miracle, are wont, on St. Patrick's Day, which always falls in the time
of Lent, to plunge flesh-meats into water, when plunged in to take out,
when taken out to dress, when dressed to eat, and call them fishes of
St. Patrick. But hereby every religious man will learn to restrain his
appetite, and not to eat meat at forbidden seasons, little regarding
what ignorant and foolish men are wont to do.

CHAPTER XXIV.

_How in his Journey to Rome he Found the Staff of Jesus._

And being desirous that his journey and all his acts should by the
apostolic authority be sanctioned, he was earnest to travel unto the
city of Saint Peter, and there more thoroughly to learn the canonical
institutes of the holy Roman Church. And when he had unfolded his
purpose unto Germanus, the blessed man approved thereof, and associated
unto him that servant of Christ, Sergecius the presbyter, as the
companion of his journey, the solace of his labor, and the becoming
testimony of his holy conversation. Proceeding, therefore, by the
divine impulse, or by the angelic revelation, he went out of his course
unto a solitary man who lived in an island in the Tuscan Sea; and the
solitary man was pure in his life, and he was of great desert and
esteemed of all, and in his name and in his works he was Just; and
after their holy greetings were passed, this man of God gave unto
Patrick a staff which he declared himself to have received from the
hands of the Lord Jesus.

And there were in the island certain other solitary men, who lived
apart from him, some of whom appeared to be youths, and others decrepit
old men, with whom when Patrick had conversed, he learned that the
oldest of them were the sons of the youths; and when Saint Patrick,
marvelling, enquired of them the cause of so strange a miracle, they
answered unto him, saying: "We from our childhood were continually
inte