The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick/The Life and Acts of St. Patrick/Chapter 153

A Meadow is overflowed by the Sea.

At another time the blessed Patrick being fatigued with travel, turned aside for the sake of a little rest, and for pasturing his horses, into a grassy meadow near Roscomaira in Connactia. But when he had sate down and his horses had begun to feed, a certain wicked and perverse plebeian, the owner of the place, rushed forward in the fury of anger to expel him forth. And first he attacked the saint with reproachful words, and at length he cast stones at the horses and drove them from the field: wherefore the hurt done unto them, increased the injury and the affront offered unto their master. And as Saint Patrick was one, and chief among those horses, with which according to the prophet Habacuc the Lord made his way in the sea, therefore was the Lord wroth at an injury offered unto him, and therefore at his command the meadow withered up, and the sea flowing forward covered it, and it remained unfruitful for ever. Fitting and just was this judgment of God, that the people which hated him, and refused his servant one blade of grass, should lose the whole harvest; and that as this man despitefully entreated Saint Patrick, and drove him from his field, he should thenceforward lose the place for which so contentiously he had striven.