CONTAMINATION OF NATIVE IRISH SPRING FESTIVAL AND ACCOUNT OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSION IN HIBERNO-LATIN SOURCE VITA SANCTI PATRICII MAXIM FOMIN, UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER AT COLERAINE Writing about the implications of the Buddhist conversion of Tibet, M. Kapstein remarked: When we think of conversion, it is individual conversion that we have in mind. Following James, we sometimes think of this as a sudden and dramatic reorientation of consciousness, marked by profound changes of sentiment and of faith… When it is conversion of a nation that is at issue, the gradual transformation of cosmological frameworks, of ritual, intellectual, and bureaucratic practices, and of the historical and mythic narratives through which the national identity is constituted are among the key themes to which we must attend. 1 In what follows, we shall seek to explore the story of religious conversion of the early Irish within the framework, indicated by Kapstein, i.e. from the point of view of the cosmological, ritual, historical and mythical perspectives. We shall describe and discuss the implications of the story, contained in the seventh century life of St. Patrick about the coming of the saint to Tara, perceived by the compilers of the vernacular Irish sources as the sacred capital of the island. Therefore, we shall be asking (and trying to answer) the following questions. Firstly, on what day Patrick arrived to Tara and what place the date occupies in the outlook of the early Irish? Secondly, what was the central ritual associated with the coming of Patrick? Thirdly, what historical reasons existed at the time to choose this particular date of Patrick’s arrival? And, lastly, what metaphorical effect did his mission have on the fate of the kings of Tara? 1 M. Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism. Conversion, Contestation and Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2000) 65. Above, Kapstein referred to William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. Baltimore: Penguin (1987). 1