Baring-Gould’s sources: Irish Martyrologies, amongst others that of Tallaght Authority: — Mention in the lives of S. Patrick and S. Bridget.] According to some accounts, S. Ibax was bishop in Ireland before the arrival of S. Patrick. That he was a contemporary of the great apostle of Ireland cannot be denied, and that is as much as can be granted consistendy with the truth of history. The accounts which occur in the late tracts and lives abound in anachronisms and contradictions, while the old Irish annals and the most correct lives of S. Patrick are in direct opposition to them. According to some of these late stories, invented at a time when some bishops claimed a pre-eminence and antiquity for their sees to which they were not originally entided, Ibar of Beg-erin or Begery opposed S. Patrick, and refused to acknowledge his jurisdiction, till he was admonished to do so by an angel. When S. Patrick met with hostility in Tipperary from the prince, Olild, he requested Ibar to offer prayers to God for his conversion, and these prayers were so efficacious that Olild, his family, and all his subjects, are said to have been converted and baptized. That Ibar was a bishop before 465 is hardly probable; in all likelihood he was consecrated by S. Patrick. His school at Beg-erin was famous throughout the land, and a nursery of saints.