Saint Piran or Pyran (; ), died c. 480, was a 5th-century Cornish abbot and saint, possibly of Irish origin. He is the patron saint of tin-miners, and is also generally regarded as the patron saint of Cornwall, although Saint Michael and Saint Petroc also have some claim to this title. The consensus of scholarship has identified the "Life" of St Piran as a copy of that of the Irish saint Ciarán of Saigir with the names changed. While we cannot be certain of Piran’s origins, it is generally accepted that he was Irish, that he spent time in Wales and later was expelled from Ireland because of his powerful preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Having been thrown into the sea tied to a mill stone, he miraculously arrived on the shores of Cornwall where he built his tiny oratory and continued his work of evangelism, founding communities. Saint Piran's Flag, a white cross on a black background, is the Cornish national flag. Saint Piran's Day falls on 5 March. Suggested Irish origins Piran is the most famous of all the saints said to have come to Cornwall from Ireland. By at least the 13th century, since Brittonic languages and Goidelic languages regularly alternate p and k sounds (see the classification of Celtic languages for an explanation), he had become identified as the Irish Saint Ciarán of Saigir who founded the monastery at Seir-Kieran in County Offaly. The Celtic Scholar Charles Plummer suggested that Ciaran of Clonmacnoise was the patron saint of Cornwall Saint Piran, challenging the more broadly accepted belief that he was Ciaran of Saigir. The difference in spelling is for dialect or linguistical reasons between the two Insular Celtic languages. Brytonic was categorized as P-Celtic, as it replaced the harder 'c' or k sound in the Goidelic languages with the softer letter 'p'. On the other hand, Goidelic was seen by scholars as being Q-Celtic, as one of the earliest Ogham inscriptions used a 'Q' represented by Queirt, which was symbolised by the Apple Tree to phonetically pronounce the k sound, although Q was later replaced by the letter 'C' in the Old Irish alphabet. The fourteenth-century Life of Saint Piran, probably written at Exeter Cathedral, is a complete copy of an earlier Middle Irish life of Saint Ciarán of Saighir, with different parentage and a different ending that takes into account Piran's works in