Lacken is a parish with a long history.

St. Patrick in his Confessions wrote, "After a few years, when I was in Britain, my family received me, asked me whether they could trust me now, as a son, never to leave them again. But, while I was there, in a night vision, I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, he gave me one of them. I read the heading The Voice of the Irish. As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea, and they cried out, as with one voice 'We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us'. Thank God that after many years the Lord answered them according to their cry".

Liam de Paor, a former lecturer in archaeology and history in U.C.D., in his book St. Patrick's World (1993) wrote "He (Patrick) gives us only one Irish place-name, that of the wood of Foclut. He implies that it was the place of his captivity. The weight of the evidence is that this was a wood in the West of Ireland, in what is now County Mayo, on the western shore of Killala Bay".