tuae et semitae tuae in aquis multis, "Thy way is in the sea and thy path in the great waters."
As soon as they had landed they placed the body of the saint upon a large stone, which in Wey's time was known as Barcha, and let it fall back against another stone, which was known as Patronon, and immediately the stones miraculously took the body into themselves. Barcha, it appears, was hollowed out like a tomb, and the other, Patronon, was set up against it like the back of a chair.
Before proceeding with Wey's story, let us see whether we can interpret this incident. It would seem that near the port of Padron, the Iria Flavia of the ancients, at the mouth of the River Ulla, stood a megalithic monument consisting of two stones. One of these was clearly a Petra nofa, a stone with a grave hollowed out of it, and may also have been a rocking-stone, as its name Barcha or Barca implies. Behind this and touching it stood a menhir, venerated by the natives under the name of Patronon; the names Barca and Patronon clearly signify "the ship and the skipper."
Now it is evident that these two stones, which from their position resembled a ship with its captain, and which were also clearly visible from the sea as the navigator approached the port, were objects of deep veneration to the natives, and that when these were asked to adopt Santiago as their "patron saint," their minds naturally wandered to the Patronon whom they had long worshipped with his ship at Iria Flavia. It would be useless to tell them that their new patron was a Christian Apostle, who had been martyred some centuries previously at Jerusalem; they needed a concrete object for their worship, and if they must have a patron, the Patronon who had served them so well for countless generations would surely do.
So in the minds of the natives the patron saint was indissolubly connected with the menhir of Iria Flavia,
