The Well of Saint Patrick.] Perhaps the profoundest instinct of the Celtic peoples is their desire to penetrate the unknown.  With the sea before them, they wish to know what lies beyond; they dream of a Promised Land.  In the face of the unknown that lies beyond the tomb, they dream of that great journey which the pen of Dante has celebrated.  The legend tells how, while St. Patrick was preaching about Paradise and Hell to the Irish, they confessed that they would feel more assured of the reality of these places, if he would allow one of them to descend there, and then come back with information St. Patrick consented.  A pit was dug, by which an Irishman set out upon the subterranean journey.  Others wished to attempt the journey after him.  With the consent of the abbot of the neighbouring monastery, they descended into the shaft, they passed through the torments of Hell and Purgatory, and then each told of what he had seen.  Some did not emerge again; those who did laughed no more, and were henceforth unable to join in any gaiety.  Knight Owen made a descent in 1153, and gave a narrative of his travels which had a prodigious success.

Other legends related that when St. Patrick drove the goblins out of Ireland, he was greatly tormented in this place for forty days by legions of black birds.  The Irish betook themselves to the spot, and experienced the same assaults which gave them an immunity from Purgatory.  According to the narrative of Giraldus Cambrensis, the isle which served as the theatre of this strange superstition was divided into two parts.  One belonged to the monks, the other was occupied by evil spirits, who celebrated religious rites in their own manner, with an infernal uproar.  Some people, for the expiation of their sins, voluntarily exposed themselves to the fury of those demons.  There were nine ditches in which they lay for a night, tormented in a thousand different ways.  To make the descent it was necessary to obtain the permission of the bishop.  His duty it was to dissuade the penitent from attempting the adventure, and to point out to him how many people had gone in who had never come out again.  If the devotee persisted, he was ceremoniously conducted to the shaft.  He was lowered down by means of a rope, with a loaf and a vessel of water to strengthen him in the combat against the fiend which he proposed to wage.  On the following morning the sacristan offered the rope anew to the sufferer.  If he mounted to the surface again, they brought him back to the church, bearing the cross and chanting psalms.  If he were not to be found, the sacristan closed the door and departed.  In more modern times pilgrims to the sacred isles spent nine days there.  They passed over to them in a boat hollowed out of the trunk of a tree.  Once a day they drank of the water of the lake; processions and stations were performed in the beds or cells of the saints.  Upon the ninth day the penitents entered into the shaft.  Sermons were preached to them warning them of the