Saint Patrick & Names along the Antonine wall

[Nathan Ross]

Muildy=Medio, NEMETON=Nemthur=Neutur=Notyr and Dobiadon=Dumbarton?

Muildy does not sound to me like 'Medio', and it doesn't mean 'middle' either.

Fiach's scholiast says that Nemthur was Dumbarton, not 'nemeton', nor Old Kilpatrick.

'Nemeton', if it is a word, is in the middle of the RC Antonine Wall list, not at one end.

'(Sub)Dobiadon' only sounds like Dumbarton if you say it with a mouthful of peas.

Anyway, Dumbarton is the medieval name; in the 5th-6th century it was called Alt Clud, which doesn't sound like any of these names.

I am beginning to think that if I went to Old Kilpatrick and found in the ground a signpost saying "NEMETON" you'd still say: "But it's only a single source".

If you did that I would applaud your genius detective-work. But you have not.

How do you know they are not independently coming to the same conclusion based on three different sources?... unless we have EVIDENCE to show there was only one source.

As you know it is impossible to use evidence to prove a negative. If there were other sources, what were they? Why does nobody mention them?

Tafarn-y-Banwen looks to me too far from the sea to be even one of the "also ran" contenders.

14 miles. These Irish pirates must have been very easy to avoid if they were put off by that distance.

Where does he learn his barbarous Latin?

Good question! If it wasn't his native language, how did he come to speak it?...

We have inscriptional evidence for the survival of Latin in the post-Roman west of Britain, alongside the native 'Cumbric' language. That Patrick grew up speaking a pretty rustic sort of Latin, mingled with British, would not be surprising. This doesn't tell us anything about where he was from.

a small, relatively isolated community formed largely from runaway slaves and persecuted religious groups like Christians (who tended to be from the lower orders of society).

By the birth of Patrick, Christians had not been persecuted for over 100 years. The whole empire was officially Christian, from the emperors downward, and had been for decades. Christians had not been principally 'from the lower orders' since the days of Nero.

If you have any evidence for small communities of Latin-speaking Christians, who call themselves 'Romans', living anywhere outside the old borders of the empire in 'barbarian' territory, in the 4th or 5th century, you might get some support for this idea. If not, you're relying on imagination.