It has been frequently assumed, especially by English writers, that the pre-historic Irish, because of their remoteness from the Continent, must have been ruder, wilder, and more uncivilised than the inhabitants of Great Britain. But such an assumption is—to say nothing of our literary remains—in no way borne out by the results of arch?ological research. The contrary rather appears to be the case, that in point of wealth, artistic feeling, and workmanship, the Irish of the Bronze Age surpassed the inhabitants of Great Britain.
When we read such accounts as that, for example, in the Book of Ballymote, of Cormac mac Art, taking his seat at the assembly in Tara, all covered with gold and jewels, we must not set it down to the perfervid imagination of the chronicler without first consulting what Irish arch?ology has to say upon the point. The appearance of Cormac (king of Ireland in the third century, and perhaps greatest of pre-Christian monarchs), is thus described. "Beautiful," says the writer, quoting probably from ancient accounts now lost, "was the appearance of Cormac in that assembly, flowing and slightly curling was his golden hair. A red buckler with stars and animals of gold and fastenings of silver upon him. A crimson cloak in wide descending folds around him, fastened at his neck with precious stones. A torque of gold around his neck. A white shirt with a full collar, and intertwined with red gold thread upon him. A girdle of gold, inlaid with precious stones, was around him. Two wonderful shoes of gold, with golden loops upon his feet. Two spears with golden sockets in his hands, with many rivets of red bronze. And he was himself, besides, symmetrical and beautiful of form, without blemish or reproach." The abundance of gold ornament which Cormac is here represented as wearing, is no mere imagination of the writer's. It is founded upon the undoubted fact that of all countries in the West of Europe Ireland was pre-eminent for its wealth in gold. How much wealthier was Ireland than Great Britain may be imagined from the fact that while the collection in the British Museum of pre-historic gold from England, Scotland, and Wales together amounted a couple of years ago to some three dozen ounces, that in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin weighs five hundred and seventy ounces. And yet the collection in the Academy contains only a small part of the gold-finds made in Ireland, for before 1861, when the new law about treasure-trove came into force, great numbers of gold objects are known to have been sold to the goldsmiths and melted down. The wealth of Ireland in gold—some of it found and smelted in the Wicklow mountains—must have at an early period determined continental trade in its direction, and we have seen that Tacitus reported its harbours as being better known through trade than those of Great Britain, or, on the most unfavourable reading of the passage, as being "known by commerce and merchants." This is also borne out by arch?ologists. Professor Montelius, who has traced a close connection in pre-historic times between Scandinavia and the West of Europe, regards much of the pre-historic gold found in the northern countries as Irish. Speaking of certain gold ornaments found in Fünen, which show, according to him, marked Irish influence, he writes: "Gold ornaments like these have not been discovered elsewhere in Scandinavia, while a great number of similar ornaments have been found in the British Isles, especially in Ireland, whose wealth of gold in the Bronze Age is amazing." Again he writes, "As certain of the gold objects found in Denmark have been introduced demonstrably from the British Islands, probably from Ireland, the thought is obvious—is not a great part of the other gold objects found in Southern Scandinavia also of Irish origin, and of the Bronze Age there?... for this island was, during the Bronze Age, one of the lands of Europe richest in gold." "No other country in Europe possesses so much manufactured gold belonging to early and medi?val times," writes Mr. Ernest Smith.
It is true that the Irish Celts, despite their mineral wealth, never minted coin, a want which has been adduced to prove a lack of civilisation on their part. But, as Mr. Coffey points out, coinage is a comparatively late invention; the Egyptians—for all their civilisation—never possessed a native coinage, and even such ancient trading cities as Carthage and Gades did not strike coins until a late period. "A little reflection," says Professor Ridgeway, "shows us that it has been quite possible for peoples to attain a high degree of civilisation without feeling any need of what are properly termed coins." "The absence of coinage," adds Mr. Coffey, "does not necessarily imply the absence of a currency system, and Professor Ridgeway has shown that the ancient Irish possessed a system of of currency or values, and a standard of weights."
A most interesting paper by Mr. Johnson, a Dublin jeweller, recently read before the Royal Irish Academy, has shown with the authority due to an expert, the marvellous skill with which the pre-historic Irish worked their gold, and the wealth of proper appliances which they must have possessed in order to turn out such unique and admirable results.
The workmanship of Irish bronze articles is also very fine, and fully equal to that of Britain, while Greenwell considers their clay urns and food-vessels superior to the British. In Ireland he says the urns, "and especially the food vessels, are of better workmanship, and more elaborately and tastefully ornamented than in most parts of Britain. Many of the food vessels found in Argyleshire, and in other districts in the Southwest of Scotland, as might be perhaps expected, are very Irish in character, and may claim to be equally fine in taste and delicate in workmanship with those of Ireland."
The brilliant appearance of Cormac mac Art when presiding over the assembly at Tara, covered with gold and jewels, receives enhanced credibility from the proofs of early Irish wealth and culture that I have just adduced. Let us glance at Tara itself, as it existed in the time of Cormac, and see whether arch?ology can throw any light upon the ancient accounts of that royal hill. It was round this hill that the great Féis, or assemblage of the men of all Ireland, took place triennially, with a threefold purpose—to promulgate laws universally binding upon all Ireland; to test, purge, and sanction the annals and genealogies of Ireland, in the presence of all men, so that no untruth or flaw might creep in; and, finally, to register the same in the great national record, in later times called the Saltair of Tara, so that cases of disputed succession might be peacefully settled by reference to this central authoritative volume. The session of the men of Ireland thus convened took place on the third day before Samhain—November day—and ended the third day after it. We are told that Cormac, who presided over these assemblies, had ten persons in constant waiting upon his person, who hardly ever left him. These were a prince of noble blood, a druid, a physician, a brehon, a bard, a historian, a musician, and three stewards. And Keating tells us that the very same arrangement was observed from Cormac's time—in the third century—to the death of Brian Boru in the eleventh, the only alteration being that a Christian priest was substituted for the druid.
To accommodate the chiefs and princes who came to the great Féis, Cormac built the renowned Teach Míodhchuarta which was able to accommodate a thousand persons, and which was used at once for a house of assembly, a banqueting hall, and a sleeping abode. We have two accounts of this hall and of the other monuments of Tara, written, the one in poetry, the other in verse, some nine hundred years ago. The prose of the Dinnseanchus describes accurately the lie of the building, "to the north-west of the eastern mound." "The ruins of this house"—it lay in ruins then as now—"are thus situated: the lower part to the north and the higher part to the south; and walls are raised about it to the east and to the west. The northern side of it is enclosed and small, the lie of it is north and south. It is in the form of a long house with twelve doors upon it, or fourteen, seven to the west and seven to the east. This was the great house of a thousand soldiers." Keating, following his ancient authorities, graphically describes the Tara assembly.
"The nobles," he writes, "both territorial lords and captains of bands of warriors, were each man of them, always attended by his own proper shield-bearer. Again their banquet-halls were arranged in the following manner, to wit, they were long narrow buildings with tables arranged along both the opposite walls of the hall; then along these side walls there was placed a beam, in which were fixed numerous hooks (one over the seat destined for each of the nobles), and between every two of them there was but the breadth of one shield. Upon these hooks the shanachy hung up the shields of the nobles previously to their sitting down to the banquet, at which they all, both lords and captains, sat each beneath his own shield. However, the most honoured side of the house was occupied by the territorial lords, whilst the captains of warriors were seated opposite to them at the other. The upper end of the hall was the place of the ollavs, while the lower end was assigned to the attendants and the officers in waiting. It was also prescribed that no man should be placed opposite another at the same table, but that all, both territorial lords and captains, should sit with their backs towards the wall, beneath their own shields. Again, they never admitted females into their banquet-halls; these had a hall of their own in which they were separately served. It was likewise the prescribed usage to clear out the banquet-hall previous to serving the assembled nobles therein. And no one was allowed to remain in the building but three, namely, a Shanachy and a bolsgaire , and a trumpeter, the duty of which latter officer was to summon all the guests to the banquet-hall by the sound of his trumpet-horn. He had to sound his horn three times. At the first blast the shield-bearers of the territorial chieftains assembled round the door of the hall, where the marshal received from them the shields of their lords, which he then, according to the directions of the shanachy, hung up each in its assigned place. The trumpeter then sounded his trumpet a second time, and the shield-bearers of the chieftains of the military bands assembled round the door of the banquet-hall, where the marshal received their lords' shields from them also, and hung them up at the other side of the hall according to the orders of the shanachy, and over the table of the warriors. The trumpeter sounded his trumpet the third time, and thereupon both the nobles and the warrior chiefs entered the banquet-hall, and then each man sat down beneath his own shield, and thus were all contests for precedency avoided amongst them."
These accounts of the Dinnseanchus and of Keating, taken from authorities now lost, will be likely to receive additional credit when we know that the statements made nine hundred years ago, when Tara had even then lain in ruins for four centuries, have been verified in every essential particular by the officers of the Ordnance Survey. The statement in the Dinnseanchus made nearly nine hundred years ago that there were either six or seven doors on each side, shows the condition into which Tara had then fallen, one on each side being so obliterated that now, also, it is difficult to say whether it was a door or not. The length of the hall, according to Petrie's accurate measurements, was seven hundred and sixty feet, and its breadth was nearly ninety. There was a double row of benches on each side, running the entire length of the hall, which would give four rows of men if we remember that the guests were all seated on the same side of the tables, and allowing the ample room of three feet to each man, this would just give accommodation to a thousand. In the middle of the hall, running down all the way between the benches, there was a row of fires, and just above each fire was a spit descending from the roof, at which the joints were roasted. There is a ground plan of the building, in the Book of Leinster, and the figure of a cook is rudely drawn with his mouth open, and a ladle in his hand to baste the joint. The king sat at the southern end of the hall, and the servants and retainers occupied the northern.
The banqueting-hall and all the other buildings at Tara were of wood, nor is the absence of stone buildings in itself a proof of low civilisation, since, in a country like Ireland, abounding in timber, wood could be made to answer every purpose—as in point of fact it does at this day over the greater part of America, and in all northern countries where forests are numerous. All or most Irish houses, down to the period of the Danish invasions, were constructed of wood, or of wood and clay mixed, or of clay and unmortared stones, and their strongholds were of wooden pallisades planted upon clay earth-works. This is the reason why so few remains of pre-historic buildings have come down to us, but it is no reason for believing that, as in Cormac's banquet-hall, rude palatial effects were not often produced. An interesting poem in the Dialogue of the Sages, from the Book of Lismore, describes the house of the Lady Credé, said to have been a contemporary of Finn mac Cúmhail in the third century. Though the poem may not itself be very old, it no doubt embodies many ancient truths, and is worth quoting from. A poet comes to woo the lady, and brings this poem with him. Finn accompanies him. When they reached her fortress "girls, yellow-haired, of marriageable age, showed on the balconies of her bowers." The poet sang to her—
"Happy is the house in which she is Between men and children and women, Between druids and musical performers, Between cupbearers and doorkeepers. Between equerries without fear, And distributors who divide , And, over all these, the command belongs To Credé of the yellow hair. * * * * * The colour is like the colour of lime, Within it are couches and green rushes (?) Within it are silks and blue mantles, Within it are red, gold, and crystal cups. Of its many chambers the corner stones, Are all of silver and yellow gold, In faultless stripes its thatch is spread, Of wings of brown, and of crimson red. Two door posts of green I see, Door not devoid of beauty, Of carved silver, long has it been renowned, In the lintel that is over the door. Credé's chair is on your left hand, The pleasantest of the pleasant it is, All over, a blaze of Alpine gold At the foot of her beautiful couch. A splendid couch in full array Stands directly above the chair; It was made by Tuile in the East, Of yellow gold and precious stones. There is another bed on your right hand Of gold and silver without defect, With curtains with soft , With graceful rods of golden-bronze. An hundred feet spans Credé's house From one angle to the other, And twenty feet are fully measured In the breadth of its noble door. Its portico is covered, too, With wings of birds, both yellow and blue, Its lawn in front and its well Of crystal and of Carmogel.
"The houses of the ancient Irish were either like Cormac's banqueting-hall and Credé's house, built quadrilaterally of felled trees or split planks planted upright in the earth, and thatched overhead, or else, as was most usually the case, they were cylindrical and made of wickerwork, with a cup-shaped roof, plastered with clay and whitewashed. The magnificent dimensions of Cormac's palace, verified as they are by the careful measurements of the Ordnance Survey—a palace certainly erected in pagan times, since Tara was deserted for ever about the year 550—bear evidence, like our wealth of beautifully-wrought gold ornaments, and the superior workmanship of our surviving articles of bronze and clay, to a high degree of civilisation and culture amongst the pre-Christian Irish; I have here adduced them as bearing indirect evidence in favour of the probability that a people so civilised would have been likely to have seized on the invention of writing when they first came in contact with it, and would have kept their annals and genealogies all the more accurately from the very fact that they were evidently so advanced in other matters.
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In the Irish Annals gold is said to have been first smelted in Leinster. As late as the last century native gold was discovered on the confines of Wicklow and Wexford, and nuggets of 22, 18, 9, and 7 ounces are recorded as having been found there. Mr. Coffey quotes a most interesting account by a Mr. Weaver, director of the works established there by the Irish Government before the union to look for gold. "The discovery of native gold in Ballinvally stream, at Croghan Kinshella," says Mr. Weaver, "was at first kept secret, but being divulged, almost the whole population of the immediate neighbourhood flocked in to gather so rich a harvest, actually neglecting at the time the produce of their own fields. This happened about the autumn of the year 1796, when several hundreds of people might be seen daily assembled digging and searching for gold in the banks and bed of the stream. Considerable quantities were thus collected; this being as it subsequently proved the most productive spot; and the populace remained in undisturbed possession of the place for nearly six weeks, when Government determined to commence active operations.... Regular stream works were soon established, and up to the unhappy time of the rebellion in May, 1798, when the works were destroyed, Government had been fully reimbursed its advances; the produce of the undertaking having defrayed its own expenses and left a surplus in hand." The total amount of gold collected from this place in the last hundred years is valued at about ￡30,000. This particular spot had been probably overlooked, as Mr. Coffey remarks, by the searchers of earlier days, but no doubt other auriferous streams in the Wicklow mountains had given up their gold long since in pre-historic times to the ancient workers. (See Coffey's "Origins of Pre-historic Ornament in Ireland," p. 40.) Dr. Frazer, on the other hand, does not believe that any great part of the gold found in Ireland is indigenous, and talks of Spain and South Russia, and gold plundered from Britain. But if this be the case, what an enormous pre-historic trade Ireland must have carried on, or what a powerful invader she must have been to come by such quantities of gold! (See Dr. Frazer's paper in R.I.A. Proceedings, May, 1896). He has since supplemented this by another in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in which he leans to the opinion that the Roman aurei, the coins plundered from the Britons, were the real source of Irish gold.
See above, ch. II, note 11.
"Verbindungen zwischen Skandinavien und dem westlichen Europa vor Christi Geburt" ("Archiv für Anthropologie," vol. xix., quoted by Mr. George Coffey in his "Origins of Pre-historic Ornament in Ireland," p. 63).
"Notes on the Composition of Ancient Irish Gold and Silver Ornaments," by Ernest A. Smith, Assoc. R.S.M., F.C.S., Royal School of Mines, London, R. I. A. Transactions, May, 1896.
"Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," May, 1896. The tools and appliances necessary for producing the fine gold fibul? of a private collector, which Mr. Johnson examined, would be, he says, "a furnace, charcoal, crucible, mould for ingot, flux, bellows, several hammers, anvil, swage anvil, swages, chisels for ornament, sectional tool for producing concentric rings." On one of them, he says, "there is a thickened edge and a beautiful moulded ornament on the outer side only, which quite puzzles one as to how it was produced without suggesting what are considered to be modern tools."
A splendid find of gold ornaments made last year near the estuary of the Foyle river, of a golden model of a boat, evidently a votive offering, fitted with seat, mast, oars, and punting poles, an exquisitely-wrought gold collar, decorated in relief with the most beautiful embossed work, torques, neckchains, etc., has been dated from internal evidences as work of the second century, the neck-chains being clearly provincial Roman work of that date. It is to be regretted that these exquisite articles have found their way to the British Museum, where they will be practically lost, instead of being added to the unique Irish collection in Dublin, to which they properly belong.
Greenwell's "British Barrows," p. 62, quoted by Coffey.
O'Donovan, in his preface to "The Book of Rights," gives some reasons for believing that it may have been held only septennially.
See the Forus Feasa, p. 354 of O'Mahony's translation.
See Petrie's "Antiquities of Tara Hill," p. 129.
This seems a plain allusion to the Fenians, believed in Ireland to have been Cormac's militia.
Bede mentions, if I remember rightly—I forget where—a church built in the north of Britain, more Scotorum, robore secto, "of cleft oak, in the Irish fashion." The Columban churches were also of wood and wattles, contemporaneous with which were the beehive cells of uncemented stone, probably less warm and less comfortable than the thatched houses. "Ce que nous savons des anciens édifices irlandais," says M. Jubainville, "donne le droit d'affirmer que la plupart des constructions élevées à Emain macha pendant le période épique de l'histoire d'Irlande, ont d? être en bois; cependant il y avait été employé au moins quelques pierres." Angus the Culdee has a noble verse relating to the stones of Emania, the finest, perhaps, in the whole Saltair na rann, "Emania's palace has vanished, yet its stones still remain, but the Rome of the western world is now Glendaloch of the gatherings," "is Ruam iarthair beatha Gleann dalach dá locha."
See "Silva Gadelica," p. 111, and O'Curry's MS. Materials, p. 595.
Aibhinn in tech in atá,
Idir fira is maca is mná,
Idir dhruidh ocus aes ceóil,
Idir dhailiumh is dhoirseoir.
Thus O'Curry translates casair as if he had taken it to be lasair. O'Grady translates "an overlay of Elpa's gold."
Even supposing the Ogam alphabet to have been used in pre-Christian times, though it may have been employed by ollavs and poets to perpetuate tribal names and genealogies, still it was much too cumbrous and clumsy an invention to produce anything deserving the name of real literature. It is, so far as we know, only with the coming of Patrick that Ireland may be said to have become, properly speaking, a literary country. The churches and monasteries established by him soon became so many nuclei of learning, and from the end of the fifth century a knowledge of letters seems to have entirely permeated the island. So suddenly does this appear to have taken place, and so rapidly does Ireland seem to have produced a flourishing literature of laws, poems, and sagas, that it is very hard to believe that the inhabitants had not, before his coming, arrived at a high state of indigenous culture. This aspect of the case has been recently strongly put by Dr. Sigerson. "I assert," said he, speaking of the early Brehon laws, at the revision of which in a Christian sense St. Patrick is said to have assisted, "that, speaking biologically, such laws could not emanate from any race whose brains have not been subject to the quickening influence of education for many generations."
The usual date assigned for St. Patrick's landing in Ireland in the character of a missionary is 432, and his work among the Irish is said to have lasted for sixty years, during which time he broke down the idol Crom Cruach, burnt the books of the druids at Tara, ordained numerous missionaries and bishops, and succeeded in winning over to Christianity a great number of the chiefs and sub-kings, who were in their turn followed by their tribesmen.
St. Patrick did not work alone, nor did he come to Ireland as a solitary pioneer of a new religion; he was accompanied, as we learn from his life in the Book of Armagh, by a multitude of bishops, priests, deacons, readers, and others, who had crossed over along with him for the service. Several were his own blood relations, one was his sister's son. Many likely youths whom he met on his missionary travels he converted to Christianity, taught to read, tonsured, and afterwards ordained. These new priests thus appointed worked in all directions, establishing churches and getting together congregations from amongst the neighbouring heathen. Unable to give proper attention to the teaching of the youths whom he elected as his helpers, so long as he himself was engaged in journeying through Ireland from point to point, he, after about twenty years of peripatetic teaching, established at Armagh about the year 450 the first Christian school ever founded in Ireland, the progenitor of that long line of colleges which made Ireland famous throughout Europe, and to which, two hundred years later, her Anglo-Saxon neighbours flocked in thousands.
The equipments of these newly-made priests was of the scantiest. Each, as he was sent forth, received an alphabet-of-the-faith or elementary-explanation of the Christian doctrine, frequently written by Patrick himself, a "Liber ordinis," or "Mass Book," a written form for the administration of the sacraments, a psaltery, and, if it could be spared, a copy of the Gospels. A good-sized retinue followed Patrick in all his journeyings, ready to supply with their own hands all things necessary for the new churches established by the saint, as well as to minister to his own wants. He travelled with his episcopal coadjutor, his psalm-singer, his assistant priest, his judge—originally a Brehon by profession, whom he found most useful in adjudicating on disputed questions—a personal champion to protect him from sudden attack and to carry him through floods and other obstacles, an attendant on himself, a bellringer, a cook, a brewer, a chaplain at the table, two waiters, and others who provided food and accommodation for himself and his household. He had in his company three smiths, three artificers, and three ladies who embroidered. His smiths and artificers made altars, book-covers, bells, and helped to erect his wooden churches; the ladies, one of them his own sister, made vestments and altar linens.
St. Patrick was essentially a man of work and not of letters, and yet it so happens that he is the earliest Irish writer of whom we can say with confidence that what is ascribed to him is really his. And here it is as well to say something about the genuineness of St. Patrick's personality and the authenticity of his writings, for the opinion started by Ledwich has gone abroad, and has somehow become prevalent, that St. Patrick's personality is nearly as nebulous as that of King Arthur or of Finn mac Cúmhail, and at the best is made up of a number of little Patricks lumped into one great one. That there was more than one Patrick is certain, and that the great Saint Patrick who wrote the "Confession" may have got credit in the early Latin and later Irish lives for the acts of others, is perfectly possible, but that most of the essential features of his life are true, is beyond all doubt, and we have a manuscript 1091 years old, apparently copied from his own handwriting, and containing his own confession and apologia.
How this exquisite manuscript, consisting of 216 vellum leaves, written in double columns, has happily been preserved to us, we shall not lose time in inquiring; but how its exact date has been ascertained through what Dr. Reeves has characterised as "one of the most elegant and recondite demonstrations which any learned society has on record, is worth mentioning." The Rev. Charles Graves, the present Bishop of Limerick, made a thorough examination of the whole codex when, after many vicissitudes and hair-breadth escapes from destruction, it had been temporarily deposited in the Royal Irish Academy. Knowing, as O'Curry pointed out, that it was the custom for Irish scribes to sign their own names, with usually some particulars about their writing, at the end of each piece they copied, he made a careful search and discovered that this had actually been done in the Book of Armagh, and in no less than eight places, but that on every spot where it occurred it had been erased for some apparently inscrutable reason, with the greatest pains. In the last place but one, however, where the colophon occurred, the process of erasure had been less thorough than in the others, and after long consideration, and treatment of the erasure with gallic acid and spirits of wine, Dr. Graves discovered that the words so carefully rubbed out were Pro Ferdomnacho ores, "Pray for Ferdomnach." Turning to the other places, he found that the erased words in at least one other place were evidently the same. This settled the name of the scribe; he was Ferdomnach. The next step was to search the "Four Masters," who record the existence of two scribes of that name who died at Armagh, one in 726 and the other in 844. One of these it must have been who wrote the Book of Armagh,—but which? This also Dr. Graves discovered, with the greatest ingenuity. At the foot of Fols. 52-6 he was, with extreme difficulty, able to decipher the words ... ach hunc ... e dictante ... ach herede Patricii scripsit. From these stray syllables he surmised that Ferdomnach had written the book at the bidding of some Archbishop of Armagh whose name ended in ach. For this the Psalter of Cashel, Leabhar Breac, and "Four Masters," were consulted, and it was found that one Archbishop Senaach died in 609; it could not then have been by his commands the book was written by the first Ferdomnach; then came, after a long interval, Faoindealach, who died in 794, Connmach, who died in 806, and Torbach, who held the primacy for one year after him. On examining the hiatus it was found that the letter which preceded the fragment ach could not have been either an l or an m, but might have been a b, thus putting out of the question the names of Connmach and Faoindealach. Besides the vacant space before the ach was just sufficient to admit of the letters Tor, but not Conn, much less Faoindea. The conclusion was obvious: the passage ran, Ferdomnach hunc librum e dictante Torbach herede Patricii scripsit, "Ferdomnach wrote this book at the dictation (or command) of Torbach, Patrick's heir (successor)." Torbach, as we have seen, became Archbishop in 806 and died in 807. The date was in this way recovered.
I have been thus particular in tracing the steps by which the age of this manuscript came to light, because it contains the earliest piece of certain Irish literature we have, the "Confession of St. Patrick." Now the usually accepted date of St. Patrick's death, as given in the Annals of Ulster, is 492, about three hundred years before that, and Ferdomnach, the scribe, after copying it, added these words: "Huc usque volumen quod patricius manu conscripsit sua. Septimadecima martii die translatus est patricius ad c?los," i.e., "thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his own hand. On the seventeenth day of March was Patrick translated to the heavens." It would appear highly probable from this that Ferdomnach actually copied from St. Patrick's autograph, which had become so defaced or faded during the three previous centuries, that the scribe has written in many places incertus liber hic, "the book is uncertain here," or else put a note of interrogation to indicate that he was not sure whether he had copied the text correctly. It will be seen from this that there was not the slightest trace of any concealment on the part of the scribe as to who he himself was, or what he was copying; there was no attempt to antedate his own writing, or to suggest that his copy was an original. But long after the scribe's generation had passed away and the origin of his work been forgotten, the volume which at first had been regarded only as a fine transcript of early documents, became known as "Canon Phádraig," or Patrick's Testament, and popular opinion, relying on the colophon "thus far the book which Patrick wrote with his own hand," set down the work as the saint's autograph. The belief that the volume was St. Patrick's own autograph of course enhanced enormously its value, and with it the dignity of its possessors, and the unscrupulous plan was resolved on of erasing the signature of the actual scribe. The veneration of the public was thus secured by interested persons at the cost of truth, and the deception probably lasted so long as the possession of such a volume brought with it either credit or dignity. This same volume has another interest attaching to it, so that we cannot but felicitate ourselves that out of the wreck of so many thousands of volumes, it has been spared to us—it was brought to Brian Boru, when in the year 1004 he went upon his royal progress through Ireland, the first man of the race of Eber who had attained the proud position of monarch or Ard-righ for many centuries, and he, by the hand of his secretary, made an entry which may still be seen to-day, confirming the primacy of Armagh, and re-granting to it the episcopal supremacy of Ireland which it had always enjoyed.
It is now time to glance at St. Patrick's "Confession," as it is usually called, though in reality it is much more of the nature of an apologia pro vita sua. The evidence in favour of its authenticity is overwhelming, and is accepted by such cautious scholars as Stokes, Todd, and Reeves, no first-rate critic, with perhaps one exception, having so far as I know ever ventured to question its genuineness. It is impossible to assign any motive for a forgery, and casual references to Decuriones, Slave-traffic, and to the "Brittani?," or Britains, bear testimony to its antiquity. Again, the Latin in which it is written is barbarous in the extreme, the periods are rude, sometimes ungrammatical, often nearly unintelligible. He begins by telling us that his object in writing this confession in his old age was to defend himself from the charge of presumptuousness in undertaking the work he tried to perform amongst the Irish. He tells us that he had many toils and perils to surmount, and much to endure while engaged upon it. He never received one farthing for all his preaching and teaching. The people indeed were generous, and offered many gifts, and cast precious things upon the altar, but he would not receive them lest he might afford the unrighteous an occasion to cavil. He was still encompassed about with dangers, but he heeded them not, looking to the success which had attended his efforts, how "the sons of the Scots and the daughters of their princes became monks and virgins of Christ," and "the number of holy widows and of continent maidens was countless." It would be tedious were he to recount even a portion of what he had gone through. Twelve times had his life been endangered, but God had rescued him, and brought him safe from all plots and ambuscades and rewarded him for leaving his parents, and friends, and country, heeding neither their prayers nor their tears, that he might preach the gospel in Ireland. He appeals to all he had converted, and to all who knew him, to say whether he had not refused all gifts—nay, it was he himself who gave the gifts, to the kings and to their sons, and oftentimes was he robbed and plundered of everything, and once had he been bound in fetters of iron for fourteen days until God had delivered him, and even still while writing this confession he was living in poverty and misery, expecting death or slavery, or other evil. He prays earnestly for one thing only, that he may persevere, and not lose the people whom God has given to him at the very extremity of the world.
Unhappily this "Confession" is a most unsatisfying composition, for it omits to mention almost everything of most interest relating to the saint himself and to his mission. What floods of light might it have thrown upon a score of vexed questions, how it might have set at rest for ever theories on druidism, kingship, social life, his own birthplace, his mission from Rome, his captors. Even of himself he tells us next to nothing, except that his father's name was Calpornus, the son of Potitus, the son of Odissus, a priest, and that he dwelt in the vicus or township of Benaven Taberni?; he had also a small villa not far off, where he tells us he was made captive at the age of about sixteen years. Because his Christian training was bad, and he was not obedient to the priests when they admonished him to seek for salvation, therefore God punished him, and brought him into captivity in a strange land at the end of the world. When he was brought to Ireland he tells us that his daily task was to feed cattle, and then the love of God entered into his heart, and he used to rise before the sun and pray in the woods and mountains, in the rain, the hail, and the snow. Then there came to him one night a voice in his sleep saying to him "Your ship is ready," and he departed and went for two hundred miles, until he reached a port where he knew no one. This was after six years' captivity. The master of the ship would not take him on board, but afterwards he relented just as Patrick was about to return to the cottage where he had got lodging. He succeeded at last in reaching the home of his parents in Britannis , and his parents besought him, now that he had returned from so many perils, to remain with them always. But the angel Victor came in the guise of a man from Ireland, and gave him a letter, in which the voice of the Irish called him away, and the voices of those who dwelt near the wood of Focluth called him to walk amongst them, and the spirit of God, too, urged him to return.
He says nothing of his training, or his ordination, or his long sojourn in Gaul, or of St. Germanus, with whom he studied according to the "Lives," but he alludes incidentally to his wish to see his parents and his native Britain, and to revisit the brethren in Gaul, and to see the face of God's saints there; but though he desired all this, he would not leave his beloved converts, but would spend the rest of his life amongst them.
From this brief résumé of the celebrated "Confession" it will be seen that it is the perfervid outpouring of a zealous early Christian, anxious only to clear himself from the charges of worldliness or carelessness, and absolutely devoid of those appeals to general interest which we meet with in most of such memoirs, but there is a vein of warm piety running through the whole, and an abundance of scriptural quotations—all, of course, from the ante-Hieronymian or pre-Vulgate version, another proof of antiquity—which has caused it to be remarked that a forger might, perhaps, write equally bad Latin, but could hardly "forge the spirit that breathes in the language which is the manifest outpourings of a heart like unto the heart of St. Paul."
There are two other pieces of literature assigned to St. Patrick, as well as the "Confession"; these are the "Epistle to Coroticus" in Latin, and the "Deer's Cry" in Irish. The Epistle is not found in the Book of Armagh, but it is found in other MSS. as old as the tenth or eleventh century, and bears such close resemblance in style and language to the "Confession," whole phrases actually occurring in both, that it also has generally been regarded as genuine. There is some doubt as to who Coroticus was, but he seems to have been a semi-Christian king of Dumbarton who, along with some Scots, i.e., Irish, and the Southern Picts who had fallen away from Christianity, raided the eastern shores of Ireland and carried off a number of St. Patrick's newly-converted Christians, leaving the white garments of the neophytes stained with blood, and hurrying into captivity numbers upon whose foreheads the holy oil of confirmation was still glistening. The first letter was to ask Coroticus to restore the captives, and when this request was derided the next was sent, excommunicating him and all his aiders and abettors, calling upon all Christians neither to eat nor drink in their company until they had made expiation for their crimes. Patrick himself had, he here explains, preached the gospel to the Irish nation for the sake of God, though they had made him a captive and destroyed the men-servants and maids of his father's house. He had been born a freedman and a noble, the son of a decurio or prefect, but he had sold his nobility for others and regretted it not. His lament over the loss of his converts is touching: "Oh! my most beautiful and most loving brothers and children whom in countless numbers I have begotten in Christ, what shall I do for you? Am I so unworthy before God and men that I cannot help you? Is it a crime to have been born in Ireland? And have we not the same God as they have? I sorrow for you, yet I rejoice, for if ye are taken from the world ye are believers through me, and are gone to Paradise."
The "Cry of the Deer," or "Lorica," as it is also called, is in Irish. The saint is said to have made it when on his way to visit King Laoghaire at Tara, and the assassins who had been planted by the king to slay him and his companions thought as he chanted this hymn that it was a herd of deer that passed them by, and thus they escaped. The metre of the original is a kind of unrhymed or half-rhymed rhapsody, called in Irish a Rosg, and is perfectly unadorned. The language, however, though very old, has of course been modified in the process of transcription. Patrick calls upon the Trinity to protect him that day at Tara, and to bind to him the power of the elements.
I bind me to-day
God's might to direct me,
God's power to protect me,
God's wisdom for learning,
God's eye for discerning,
God's ear for my hearing,
God's word for my clearing,
God's hand for my cover,
God's path to pass over,
God's buckler to guard me,
God's army to ward me,
Against snares of the devils,
Against vices, temptations,
Against men who plot evils
To hurt me anew,
Anear or afar with many or few.
* * * * *
Christ near, Christ here,
Christ be with me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ be o'er me,
Christ before me,
Christ in the left and the right,
Christ hither and thither,
Christ in the sight,
Of each eye that shall seek me, etc.
In the Book of Armagh, in the last chapter of Tirechan's life, St. Patrick is declared to be entitled to four honours in every church and monastery of the island. One of these honours was that the hymn written by St. Seachnall, his nephew, in praise of himself, was to be sung in the churches during the days when his festival was being celebrated, and another was that "his Irish canticle" was to be always sung, apparently all the year through, in the liturgy, but perhaps only during the week of his festival. The Irish canticle is evidently this "Lorica," which was, as we see from this notice in the Book of Armagh, believed to be his in the seventh century, and it has been sung under that belief from that day almost to our own.
The other hymn, the singing of which at his festival is alluded to as one of St. Patrick's "honours," was composed by Seachnall , a nephew of St. Patrick's, in laudation of the saint himself. It is a very interesting piece of rough latinity, and is generally regarded as genuine. The occasion of its composition deserves to be told, for it casts a ray of light on the prudential and self-restrained side of St. Patrick's character, which no doubt contributed largely to his success when working in the midst of his wavering converts. Seachnall said that Patrick's preaching would be perfect if he only insisted a little more on the necessity of giving, for then more property and land would be at the disposal of the Church for pious uses. This remark of his nephew was repeated to St. Patrick, who was very much annoyed at it, and said beautifully, that "for the sake of charity he forbore to preach charity," and intimated that the holy men who should come after him might benefit by the offerings of the faithful which he had left untouched. Then Seachnall, grieved at having thus pained his uncle, and anxious to win his regard again, composed a poem of twenty-two stanzas each beginning with a different letter, with four lines of fifteen syllables in each verse. When he had done this he asked permission of Patrick to recite to him a poem which he had composed in praise of a holy man, and when Patrick said that he would gladly hear the praises of any of God's household, the poet adroitly suppressing Patrick's name which occurs in the first verse, recited it for him. Patrick was pleased, but interupted the poet at one stanza when he said that the subject of his laudations was maximus in regno c?lorum, "the greatest in the kingdom of heaven," asking how could that be said of any man. Maximus, ingeniously replied Seachnall, does not here mean "greatest," but only "very great." He then disclosed to his uncle that he himself was the object of the poem, and asked—like all bards—for the reward for it, whereupon Patrick promised that to all who recited the hymn piously morning and evening, God in His mercy might give the glory of heaven. "I am content with that award," said the poet, "but as the hymn is long and difficult to be remembered I wish you would obtain the same reward for whosoever recites even a part of it." Whereupon St. Patrick promised that the recitation of the last three verses would be sufficient, and his nephew was satisfied, having proved himself the first poet of Christian Ireland, and having obtained such a reward for his verses as neither bard nor ollav had ever obtained before him. It was probably this same Seachnall who was the author of the much finer hymn of eleven verses which used to be sung in the old Irish churches at communion—
"Sancti venite Christi corpus sumite, Sanctum bibentes Quo redempti sanguinem. Salvati Christi Corpore et sanguine, A quo refecti Laudes dicamus Deo. Hoc Sacramento Corporis et sanguinis Omnes exuti Ab inferni faucibus, etc.
"The legend in the Leabhar Breac has it that this hymn was first chanted during the holy communion by the angels in his church, on the reconciliation between himself and Saint Patrick, whence the origin of chanting it during the communion service.
The Book of Armagh contains the two earliest lives of the national saint that we have, probably the two earliest biographies of any size ever composed in Ireland. They are written in rude Latin, with a good deal of Irish place-names and Irish words intermixed, the first by one Muirchu Maccu Machteni, who tells us that he wrote at the instigation of Aed, bishop of Sletty, who, as we know from the "Four Masters," died about 698, and the second by Tirechan, who says he received his knowledge of the saint from the lips and writings of Bishop Ultan, his tutor, who died in 656, and who, supposing him to have been seventy or eighty years old at the time of his death, must have been born only eighty or ninety years after the death of St. Patrick himself. Both of these writers appear to have had older memoirs to draw on, for Muirchu says that many had before them endeavoured to write the history of St. Patrick from what their fathers and those who were ministers of the Word from the beginning had told them, though none had ever succeeded in producing a proper biography, and in Tirechan's life of him in the Book of Armagh—an evident patchwork—we read that all his godly doings had been brought together and collected by the most skilful of the ancients. The first of these lives consists of two books containing twenty-eight and thirteen short chapters, respectively, the second, Tirechan's, of one book containing fifty-seven chapters, in addition to which there are a number of minor notes referring to St. Patrick in Latin and in Irish, which Ferdomnach, who transcribed the book in 807, appears to have taken from other old lives or memoirs of the saint. The Irish portions of these notes are of peculiar interest, as showing what the Irish language was, as written about the year 800.
If it is genuine the earliest life of Patrick ever written would probably be the brief metrical life ascribed to Fiacc of Sletty, the sixth or seventh in descent from Cáthaoir Mór, who was king of Leinster at the close of the second century. His mother was a sister of Dubhthach's , the chief poet and Brehon of Ireland, who, we are told, helped St. Patrick to review and revise the Brehon Laws. Fiacc was a youthful poet in Dubhthach's train at Tara. Afterwards he was tonsured by St. Patrick, became Bishop of Sletty, and on Patrick's death is said to have written his life, and not forgetful of his former training, to have written it in elaborate verse. So famous a critic as Zimmer believed half the poem to be genuine, but Thurneysen rejects it because it does not fall in with his theories of Irish metre.
But the longest and most important life of St. Patrick is that known as the Tripartite, or Triply-divided Life, which is really a series of three semi-historical homilies, or discourses, which were probably delivered in honour of the saint on the three festival days devoted to his memory, that is, the Vigil, the Feast itself, on March 17th, and the day after, or else the Octave. This Tripartite life, which is a fairly complete one, is written in ancient Irish, with many passages of Latin interspersed. The monk Jocelin, who wrote a life of the saint in the twelfth century, tells us that St. Evin—from whom Monasterevin, in Queen's County, is called, a saint of the early sixth century—wrote a life of Patrick partly in Latin and partly in Gaelic, and Colgan, the learned Franciscan who translated the Tripartite in his "Trias Thaumaturga," believed that this was the very life which St. Evin wrote. Colgan found the Tripartite life in three very ancient Gaelic MSS., procured for him, no doubt, by the unwearied research of Brother Michael O'Clery in the early part of the seventeenth century, which he collated one with the other, and of which he gives the following noteworthy account:—
"The first thing to be observed is that it has been written by its first author and in the aforesaid manuscript, partly in Latin, partly in Gaelic, and this in very ancient language, almost impenetrable by reason of its very great antiquity, exhibiting not only in the same chapter, but also in the same line, alternate phrases now in the Latin, now in the Gaelic tongue. In the second place, it is to be noticed that this life, on account of the very great antiquity of its style, which was held in much regard, used to be read in the schools of our antiquarians in the presence of their pupils, being elucidated and expounded by the glosses of the masters, and by interpretations of and observations on the more abstruse words; so that hence it is not to be wondered at that some words—which certainly did happen—gradually crept from these glosses into the texts, and thus brought a certain colour of newness into this most ancient and faithful author, some things being turned from Latin into Gaelic, some abbreviated by the scribes, and some altogether omitted."
Colgan further tells us that, "of the three MSS. above mentioned, the first and chief is from very ancient vellums of the O'Clerys, antiquarians in Ulster; the second from the O'Deorans, of Leinster; the third taken from I know not what codex; and they differ from each other in some respects; one relating more diffusely what is more close in the others, and one relating in Latin what in the others was told in Gaelic; but we have followed the authority of that which relates the occurrences more diffusely and in Latin." O'Curry discovered in the British Museum a copy of this life, made in the fifteenth century, and it has since been admirably edited by Dr. Whitley Stokes, who, however, does not believe for philological and other reasons, that it could have been written before the middle of the tenth century. If so it is no doubt a compilation of all the pre-existing lives of the saint, and it mentions distinctly that six different writers, not counting Fiacc the poet, had collected the events of St. Patrick's life and his miracles, amongst whom were St. Columcille, who died in 592, and St. Ultan, who died in 656. It is hardly necessary, however, to say that in the matter of all anonymous Gaelic writings like the present, it is difficult to decide with any certainty as to age or date. The occurrence, indeed, of very old forms, shows that the sentences containing those old forms were first written at an early period; the occurrence of more modern forms, however, is no proof that the passages containing them were first written in modern times, for the words may have been altered by later transcribers into the language they spoke themselves; nor are allusions to events which we know were later than the date of an alleged writer, always conclusive proofs that the work which contains them cannot be his work, for such allusions constantly creep into the margin of books at the hands of copyists, especially if those books were—as Colgan says the Tripartite life was—annotated and explained in schools. In cases of this kind there is always considerable latitude to be allowed to destructive and constructive criticism, and at the end matters must still remain doubtful.
So much for the more important lives of St. Patrick, the first known littérateur of Ireland.
********
"Contemporary Review."
So Tirechan, in Book of Armagh, fol. 9. "Et secum fuit multitudo episcoporum sanctorum et presbiterorum, et diaconorum, ac exorcistarum, hostiarium, lectorumque, necnon filiorum quos ordinavit."
So many English were attracted to Armagh in the seventh century that the city was divided into three wards, or thirds, one of which was called the Saxon Third.
See Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 64.
There is a curious poem on St. Patrick's family of artificers quoted in the "Four Masters" under A.D. 278.
There were no less than twenty-two saints of the name of Colum, yet that does not detract one iota from the genuineness of the life of the great Colum, called Columcille. There were fourteen St. Brendans, there were twenty-five St. Ciarans, and fifteen St. Brigits.
How Ledwich—who, however, as O'Donovan remarks, looks at everything Irish with a jaundiced eye—could have written down St. Patrick as a myth is inconceivable, in the face of the fact that he was already recognised in the sixth century as a great saint. The earliest mention of him is probably St. Columba's subscription to the Book of Durrow, in the sixth century, which runs: "Rogo beatitudinem tuam Sancte Presbyter Patrici, ut quicumque hunc libellum manu tenuerit Columb? Scriptoris, qui hoc scripsi ... met evangelium per xii. dierum spatium." Here we see a prayer already addressed to him as a national saint.
This is clearly shown by the 56th chap. of Tirechan's life fol. 16aa of the Book of Armagh, where he makes the following statement: "XIII. Anno Teothosii imperatoris a Celestino episcopo papa Rom? Patricius episcopus ad doctrinam Scottorum mittitur. Qui Celestinus XLVII episcopus fuit a Petro apostolo in urbe Roma. Paladius episcopus primus mittitur qui Patricius alio nomine appellabatur, qui martirium passus est apud Scottos, ut tradunt sancti antiqui. Deinde Patricius secundus ab anguelo Dei, Victor nomine, et a Celestino papa mittitur, cui Hibernia tota credidit, qui eam pene totam bab." Also it is to be observed that St. Patrick's life according to the usual computations, covers 120 years, which seems an improbably long period. According to the Brussels Codex of Muirchu Maccu Machteni's life, he died a passione Domini nostri 436; the author, no doubt, imagined the passion to have taken place in A.D. 34; this would fix Patrick's death as in 470. See p. 20 of Father Hogan's "Documenta ex Libro Armachano," and with this Tirechan also agrees, saying "A passione autem christi colleguntur anni ccccxxxvi. usque ad mortem Patricii." Tirechan curiously contradicts himself in saying, "Duobus autem vel v annis regnavit Loiguire post mortem Patricii, omnis autem regni illius tempus xxxvi. ut putamus," in chap. ii., and in chap. liii. he says that Patrick taught (i.e., in Ireland) for 72 years! He evidently compiled badly from two different documents.
The only cogent reason for doubting about the reality of St. Patrick is that he is not mentioned in the Chronicon of Prosper, which comes down to the year 455, and which ascribes the conversion of Ireland to Palladius, as does Bede afterwards. It is the silence of Prosper and Bede about any one of the name of Patrick which has cast doubt upon his existence. A most ingenious theory has been propounded by Father E. O'Brien in the "Irish Ecclesiastical Record" to explain this. According to him Patrick is the Palladius of Prosper and Bede. The earliest lives, and the scholiast on Fiacc's hymn, tell us that Patrick had four names; one of these was Succat "qui est deus belli," but Palladius is the Latin of Patrick's name (succat). The Deus belli could only be rendered into Latin by the words Arius Martius or Palladius, these being the only names drawn from war-gods, and of these Palladius was the commonest. It seems not unlikely that the Patrick who wrote the "Confession" and converted Ireland is the Palladius of Bede and Prosper, who also converted Ireland. The Paladius of Tirechan who failed to convert Ireland is evidently another person altogether.
It is to be remarked that although Bede never mentions Patrick in his "Ecclesiastical History," nevertheless in the "Martyrology"—found by Mabillon at Rheims, and attributed to Bede, Patrick is distinctly commemorated—
"Patricius Domini servus conscendit ad aulam, Cuthbertus ternas tenuit denasque Kalendas.
"For the full particulars of this acute discovery, which sets the date of the codex beyond doubt or cavil, see Dr. Graves' paper read before the Royal Irish Academy, vol. iii. pp. 316-324, and a supplementary paper giving other cogent reasons, vol. iii. p. 358. According to O'Donovan, the "Four Masters" antedate here by five years. It is worth remarking that Torbach, who caused this copy to be made, was himself a noted scribe. His death in 807 is recorded in the "Four Masters" and in the "Annals of Ulster," we read "Torbach, son of Gorman, scribe, lector, and Abbot of Armagh, died."
There are several passages omitted in the Book of Armagh, which are found in an ancient Brussels MS. of the eleventh century. These were probably omitted from the Book of Armagh because they were undecipherable. The Brussels MS. and others contain nearly as much again as it, and there are many proofs that this extra matter is not of later or spurious origin; thus Tirechan refers to Patrick's own records, "ut in scriptione sua affirmat," for evidence of a fact not mentioned in the "Confession" as given in the Book of Armagh, but which is supplied by the other MSS., namely, that Patrick paid the price of fifteen "souls of men," or slaves, for protection on his missionary journey across Ireland. The frequent occurrence of deest, et cetera, et reliqua, show that the Armagh copy of the "Confession" is nothing like a full one. The Brussels MS. formerly belonged to the Irish monastery of Würzburg.
See ch. III, note 31.
The other contents of the Book of Armagh, besides the Patrician documents, are a copy of the New Testament, enriched with concordance tables and illustrative matter from Jerome, Hilary, and Pelagius. It includes the Epistle to the Laodiceans attributed to St. Paul, but it is mentioned that Jerome denied its authenticity. There are some pieces relating to St. Martin of Tours, and the Patrician pieces—the Life, the Collectanea, the Book of the Angel, and the "Confession."
"Sanctus Patricus iens ad c?lum mandavit totum fructum laboris sui tam baptismi tam causarum quam elemoisinarum deferendum esse apostolic? urbi quae scotice nominatur ardd-macha. Sic reperi in Bibliothics Scotorum. Ego scripsi, id est Caluus Perennis, in conspectu Briain imperatoris Scotorum, et quod scripsi finituit pro omnibus regibus Maceriae ." "Calvus Perennis" is the Latin translation of Mael-suthain, Brian's scribe and secretary. For a curious story about this Mael-suthain, see p. 779 O'Curry's MS. Materials.
See above Ch. XI, note 13. It has been printed in Haddan and Stubb's, "Councils," etc., vol. ii. p. 296, and also admirably in Gilbert's facsimiles of National MSS.
It has often been said that the life of the saint in the Book of Armagh ignores the Roman Mission. But while the life of Muirchu Maccu Machteni does ignore it, Tirechan's his contemporary's, life, in the same book, distinctly acknowledges it, in these words, "deinde Patricius secundus ab anguelo dei, Victor nomine, et a Celestino papa mittitur cui Hibernia tota credidit, qui eam pene totam bap." (See chap. 56 of Tirechan's life.)
In Irish he is usually called Son of Alprann or Alplann, the C of Calpornus being evidently taken as belonging to the Mac, thus Mac Calprainn became Mac Alprainn. In the Brussels Codex of Muirchu Maccu Machteni's life, however, he is called Alforni filius, and the place of his birth is called Ban navem thabur indecha, supposed to be Killpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland, which is evidently a corruption of his own Bannaven Taberni?, which seems to mean River-head Tavern; it may be from the two words navem thabur that St. Fiacc's hymn says that he was born in nemthur. Patrick himself only gives us two generations of his ancestry, and it is very significant of Irish ways to find Flann of Monasterboice, running it up to fourteen!
It is worth while to transcribe this passage as a fair specimen of St. Patrick's style and latinity. "Et ibi scilicet in sinu noctis virum venientem quasi de Hiberione cui nomen Victoricus, cum ?pistulis innumerabilibus vidi; et dedit mihi unam ex his et legi principium ?pistol? continentem 'Uox Hiberionacum.' Et dum recitabam principium ?pistol?, putabam enim ipse in mente audire vocem ipsorum qui erant juxta silvam Focluti qu? est prope mare occidentale. Et sic exclamaverunt: 'Rogamus te sancte puer ut venias et adhuc ambulas inter nos.' Et valde compunctus sum corde, et amplius non potui legere. Et sic expertus sum. Deo gratias quia post plurimos annos pr?stitit illis Dominus secundum clamorum illorum" (Folio 23, 66, Book of Armagh, p. 126 of Father Hogan's Bollandist edition).
The "Confession" ends with a certain rough eloquence: "Christus Dominus pauper fuit pro nobis; ego vero miser et infelix, et si opes voluero jam non habeo; neque me ipsum judico quia quotidie spero aut internicionem aut circumveniri, aut redigi in servitatem, sive occassio cujus-libet.... Et h?c est confessio mea antequam moriar."
Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 68.
It is printed by Haddan and Stubbs, "Councils," etc., vol. ii. p. 314.
This is certainly the first time on record that this question—so often repeated since in so many different forms—was asked.
See the original in Windsch's "Irische Texte," 1. p. 53, and Todd's "Liber Hymnorum"—
"Atomrigh indiu niurt Dé dom luamaracht Cumachta Dé dom chumgabail Ciall Dé domm imthús Rose Dé dom reimcíse, Cluas Dé dom éstecht Briathar Dé dom erlabrai, Lám De domm imdegail Intech Dé dom remthechtas. Sciath Dé dom dítin Sochraite Dé domm anucul Ar intledaib demna Ar aslaigthib dualche Ar cech nduine míduthrastar dam, ícéin ocus i n-ocus i n-uathed ocus hi sochaide, etc.
"Thus translated almost literally by Dr. Sigerson, "Bards of the Gael and Gall," p. 138. This is not the only poem attributed to St. Patrick, several others are ascribed to him in the "Tripartite Life," and a MS. in the Bibliothèque Royale contains three others. Eight lines of one of them is found in the Vatican Codex of Marianus Scotus and are given by Zeuss in his "Grammatica Celtica," p. 961, second edition. The lines there given refer to St. Brigit. There is also a rann attributed to St. Patrick quoted by the "Four Masters," and the "Chronicon Scotorum" attributes to him a rann on Bishop Erc.
"Canticum ejus scotticum semper canere," which a marginal note in the book explains as Ymnus Comanulo, which Father Hogan interprets as protectio Clamoris, adding "ac proinde synonyma voci Faith Fiada," which has been interpreted clamor custodis or "The Guardsman's Cry" by Stokes. The poem, then, was extant in the seventh century, was attributed to St. Patrick, and was sung in the churches—a strong argument for its authenticity.
"Even to this day," says Dr. Healy, in "Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 77, "the original is chanted by the peasantry of the south and west in the ancestral tongue, and it is regarded as a strong shield against all dangers natural or supernatural." I, myself, however, in collecting the "Religious Songs of Connacht," have found no trace of this, and I am not sure that the learned Bishop of Clonfert, led astray by Petrie, is not here confounding it with the "Marainn Phadraig," which mysterious piece is implicitly believed to be the work of St. Patrick, and is still recited all over the west, with the belief that there is a peculiar virtue attached to it. I have even known money to have been paid for its recital in the west of Galway, as a preventive of evil. For this curious piece, which is to me at least more than half unintelligible, see my "Religious Songs of Connacht." It appears to have been founded upon an incident similar to that recorded by Muirchu Maccu Machteni, book i. chap. 26.
Of Dunshaughlin recté Dunsaughnil (Domhnach Seachnaill) in Meath.
As this was probably the first poem in Latin ever composed in Ireland, it deserves some consideration. It is a sort of trochaic tetrameter catalectic, of the very rudest type. The ictus, or stress of the voice, which is supposed to fall on the first syllable of the first, third, fifth, and seventh feet, seldom corresponds with the accent. The elision of "m" before a vowel is disregarded, no quantities are observed, and the solitary rule of prosody kept is that the second syllable of the seventh foot is always short, with the exception of one word, indutus, which the poet probably pronounced as ind?tus. The third verse runs thus, with an evident effort at vowel rhyme ("Liber Hymnorum," vol. i. p. 11).
"Beati Christi custodit mandata in omnibus Cujus opera refulgent clara inter homines.
"Muratori printed this hymn, from the so-called Antiphonary of Bangor, a MS. of the eight century preserved in the Ambrosian Library. The rude metre is that employed by Hilary in his hymn beginning—
Ymnum dicat turba fratrum, ymnum cantus personet,
which, as Stokes points out, is the same as that of the Roman soldiers, preserved in Suetonius,
C?sar Gallias subégit, Nicomedes C?sarem.
The internal evidence of the antiquity of this hymn is "strong," says Stokes, "first, the use of the present tense in describing the saint's actions; secondly, the absence of all reference to the miracles with which the Tripartite and other lives are crowded; and, thirdly, the absence of all allusion to the Roman mission on which many later writers from Tirechan downwards insist with much persistency." We may then, I think, receive this hymn as authentic.
"Maximus namque in regno c?lorum vocabitur,
Qui quod verbis docet sacris factis adimplet bonis;
Bono procedit exemplo formamque fidelium
Mundoque in corde habet ad Deum fiduciam."
In the "Martyrology of Tallaght" this curious name is written Mac hui Machteni, i.e., the son of the grandson of Machtenus, or Muirchu, i.e., Murrough, descendant of Machtenus, and the Leabhar Breac has this note at the name of Muirchu: "civitas ejus in uib Foelan, i.e., mac hui Mathcene," thereby giving us to understand that he was a native of what is the present county of Waterford. Maccumachteni is not a surname, for these were not introduced into Ireland for three centuries later.
"Omnia qu? scripsi a principio libri hujus scitis quia in vestris regionibus gesta sunt, nizi de eis pauca inveni in utilitatem laboris mei a senioribus multis, ac ab illo Ultano episcopo Conchubernensi qui nutrivit me, retulit sermo!"
"Multos jam conatos esse ordinare narrationem istam secundum quod patres eorum et qui ministri ab initio fuerunt sermonis tradiderunt illis; sed propter difficillimum narrationis opus diversasque opiniones et plurimorum plurimas suspiciones nunquam ad unum certumque historiae tramitem pervenisse."
"Omnia in Deo gesta ab antiquis peritissimis adunata atque collecta sunt;" and again: "Post exitum Patricii alumpni sui valde ejusdem libros conscripserunt;" but this may mean that they made copies of the books left behind him.
Here is a specimen: "Dulluid patricc othemuir hicr?ch Laigen conrancatar ocus dubthach mucculugir uccdomnuch mar criathar la auu censelich. áliss patricc dubthach imdamnae .n. epscuip diadesciplib dilaignib id?n fer soêr socheni?il cenon cenainim nadip ru becc nadipromar bedasommae, toisclimm fer ?insêtche dunarructhae actoentuistiu," which would run some way thus in the modern language: "Do luid (i.e., Chuaidh) Pádraic ó Theamhair i gcrích Laighean go rancadar agus Dubhthach Mac Lugair ag Domhnach Mór Criathair le uibh Ceinnsealaigh. Ailis (i.e., fiafruighis) Pádraic Dubhthach um damhna (i.e., ádhbhar) easboig d' á dheiscioblaibh, eadhoin fear saor sói-chineáil, gan on gan ainimh (i.e., truailiughadh), nar 'bh ro bheag nár 'bh rómhór, a shaidhbhreas (?). Toisg liom fear aon seitche d'á nach rugadh acht aon tuistui (gein)," etc.
For Cáthaoir Mór, see p. 30.
The metre was called Cetal nothi, Thurneysen's "Mittelirische Verslehren," p. 63. It scarcely differs in most parts from Little Rannaigheacht.
See "Keltische Studien," Heft ii., and the "Revue Celtique." The first verses run thus:—
"Genair Patraicc in Nemthur Is ed atfet hi scélaib Maccan se mbliadan déac In tan dobreth fo deraib. Succat a ainm itubrad Ced a athair ba fissi Mac Calpairn maic Otide Hoa deochain Odissi.
"He was tenth in descent from that Owen M?r who wrested half the sovereignty of Ireland from Conn of the Hundred Battles.
I.e., "The wonder-working Three," containing the lives of Patrick, Brigit, and Columcille, translated by Colgan from Irish into Latin.
Also St. Aileran the Wise, whose "Fragments" are published by Migne; St. Adamnan, the author of the "Life of Columcille"; St. Ciaran of Belach-Duin; and St. Colman. Jocelyn says that Benignus, who died in 468, wrote another life of Patrick, but of it nothing is known.
Here is a short passage from the Tripartite, which will show the language in which it is written: "Fecht ann occ tuidhecht do Patraic do Chlochur antuaith da fuarcaib a thren-fher dar doraid and, i.e., Epscop mac Cairthind. Issed adrubart iar turcbail Patraic: uch uch. Mu Debroth, ol Patraic ni bu gnath in foculsin do rad duitsiu. Am senoir ocus am lobur ol Epscop Mac Cairthind," which would run some way thus in the modern language: "Feacht do bhi ann, ag tigheacht do Phádraig go Clochar (i gcondae, Tir-Eóghain) ón tuaidh, d' iomchair a threán-fhear é thar sruth do bhi ann, eadhoin Easbog Mac Cairthind. Is eadh adubhairt tar éis Padraig do thogbháil "Uch, uch!" Mo Dhebhroth , níor ghnáth an focal sin do rádh duit-se. Táim im sheanoir agus im lobhar ar Easbog Mac Cairthind." See O'Curry MS. Materials, p. 598.
St. Brigit was—after St. Patrick himself—probably the most noted figure amongst Irish Christians in the fifth century. She must have attained her extraordinary influence through sheer ability and intellectuality, for she appears to have been the daughter of a slave-woman, employed in the mansion of a chief called Dubhthach , who was himself tenth in descent from Felimidh, the lawgiver monarch of Ireland in the second century. The king's wife, jealous of her husband's liking for his slave, threatened him with these words, "Unless thou sellest yon bondmaid in distant lands I will exact my dowry from thee and I will leave thee," and so had her driven from the place and sold to a druid, in whose house her daughter, Dubhthach's offspring, soon afterwards saw the light. She was thus born into slavery, though not quite a slave; for Dubhthach, in selling the mother into slavery, expressly reserved for himself her offspring, whatever it might be. She must have been, at least, early inured to hardship, as St. Patrick had been. The druid, however, did not prevent her from being baptized. She grew up to be a girl of exceeding beauty, and many suitors sought her in marriage. She returned to her father's house, but refused all offers of matrimony. She aroused the jealousy of her father's wife, as her mother had done before her, and Dubhthach, indignant at her unbounded generosity with his goods, decided upon selling her to the king of North Leinster. Her father's abortive attempt to get rid of her on this occasion is thus quaintly described in her Irish life in the Leabhar Breac.
"Thereafter," says the life, "Dubhthach and his consort were minded to sell the holy Brigit into bondage, for Dubhthach liked not his cattle and his wealth to be dealt out to the poor, and that is what Brigit used to do. So Dubhthach fared in his chariot and Brigit along with him.
"Said Dubhthach to Brigit, 'Not for honour or reverence to thee art thou carried in a chariot, but to take thee, to sell thee to grind the quern for Dunlang mac Enda, King of Leinster.'
"When they came to the King's fortress Dubhthach went in to the king, and Brigit remained in her chariot at the fortress door. Dubhthach had left his sword in the chariot near Brigit. A leper came to Brigit to ask an alms. She gave him Dubhthach's sword.
"Said Dubhthach to the King, 'Wilt thou buy a bondmaid, namely, my daughter?' says he.
"Said Dunlang, 'Why sellest thou thine own daughter?'
"Said Dubhthach, 'She stayeth not from selling my wealth and from giving it to the poor.'
"Said the King, 'Let the maiden come into the fortress.'
"Dubhthach went to Brigit, and was enraged against her because she had given his sword to the poor man.
"When Brigit came into the King's presence the King said to her, 'Since it is thy father's wealth that thou takest, much more wilt thou take my wealth and my cattle and give them to the poor.'
"Said Brigit, 'The Son of the Virgin knoweth if I had thy might, with all Leinster, and with all thy wealth, I would give them to the Lord of the Elements.'
"Said the King to Dubhthach, 'Thou art not fit on either hand to bargain about this maiden, for her merit is higher before God than before men,' and the King gave Dubhthach an ivory-hilted sword (Claideb dét), et sic liberata est sancta Virgo Brigita a captivititate."
She at length succeeded in assuming the veil of a nun at the hands of a bishop called Mucaille, along with seven virgin companions. With these she eventually retired into her father's territory and founded a church at Kildare, beside an ancient oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and which gives its name to the spot. Even at this early period Kildare seems to have been a racecourse, and St. Brigit is described in the ancient lives as driving across it in her chariot.
It is remarkable that there is scarcely any mention of St. Brigit in the lives of St. Patrick, although, according to the usual chronology they were partly contemporaries, St. Brigit having become a nun about the year 467, and St. Patrick having lived until 492. About the only mention of her in the saint's life is that which tells how she once listened to Patrick preaching for three nights and days, and fell asleep, and as she dreamt she saw first white oxen in white corn-fields, and then darker ones took their place, and lastly black oxen. And thereafter, she beheld sheep and swine, and dogs and wolves quarrelling with each other, and upon her waking up, St. Patrick explained her dream as being symbolical of the history of the Irish Church present and future. The life of Brigit herself in the Book of Lismore tells the vision somewhat differently:
"'I beheld,' said she, to Patrick, when he asked her why she had fallen asleep, 'four ploughs in the north-east which ploughed the whole island, and before the sowing was finished the harvest was ripened, and clear well-springs and shiny streams came out of the furrows. White garments were on the sowers and ploughmen. I beheld four other ploughs in the north which ploughed the island athwart and turned the harvest again, and the oats which they had sown grew up at once and were ripe, and black streams came out of the furrows, and there were black garments on the sowers and on the ploughmen.'"
This vision Patrick explained to her, saying—
"'The first four ploughs which thou beheldest, those are I and thou, who sow the four books of the gospel with a sowing of faith and belief and piety. The harvest which thou beheldest are they who come unto that faith and belief through our teaching. The four ploughs which thou beheldest in the north are the false teachers and the liars which will overturn the teaching which we have sown.'"
St. Brigit's small oratory at Kildare, under the shadow of her branching oak, soon grew into a great institution, and within her own lifetime two considerable religious establishments sprang up there, one for women and the other for men. She herself selected a bishop to assist her in governing them, and another to instruct herself and her nuns. Long before her death, which occurred about the year 525, a regular city and a great school rivalling the fame of Armagh itself, had risen round her oak-tree. Cogitosus, himself one of the Kildare monks, who wrote a Latin life of St. Brigit at the desire of the community, gives us a fine description of the great church of Kildare in his own day, which was evidently some time prior to the Danish invasion at the close of the eighth century, but how long before is doubtful. He tells us that the church was both large and lofty, with many pictures and hangings, and with ornamental doorways, and that a partition ran across the breadth of the church near the chancel or sanctuary:
"At one of its extremities there was a door which admitted the bishop and his clergy to the sanctuary and to the altar; and at the other extremity on the opposite side there was a similar door by which Brigit and her virgins and widows used to enter to enjoy the banquet of the Body and Blood of Christ. Then a central partition ran down the nave, dividing the men from the women, the men being on the right and the women on the left, and each division having its own lateral entrance. These partitions did not rise to the roof of the church, but only so high as to serve their purpose. The partition at the sanctuary or chancel was formed with boards of wood decorated with pictures and covered with linen hangings which might, it seems, be drawn aside at the consecration, to give the people in the nave a better view of the holy mysteries."
The two institutions—nuns and monks—planted by St. Brigit continued long to flourish side by side, and Kildare is the only religious establishment in Ireland, says Dr. Healy, which down to a comparatively recent period preserved the double line of succession, of abbot-bishops and of abbesses. The annalists always took care to record the names of the abbesses with the same accuracy as those of the abbots, and to the last the abbesses as successors of St. Brigit, were credited with, in public opinion, and probably enjoyed in fact, a certain supremacy over the bishops of Kildare themselves.
Amongst other occupations the monks and scholars of Kildare seem to have given themselves up to decorative art, and a school of metal work under the supervision of Brigit's first bishop soon sprang into existence, producing all kinds of artistically decorated chalices, bells, patens, and shrines; and the impulse given thus early to artistic work and to beautiful creations seems to have long propagated itself in Kildare, as the description of the church by Cogitosus shows, and as we may still conjecture from the exquisite round tower with its unusually ornamented doorway and its great height of over 130 feet, the loftiest tower of the kind in Ireland.
No doubt several attributes of the pagan Brigit, who, as we have seen, was accounted by the ancient Irish to have been the goddess of poets, passed over to her Christian namesake, who was also credited with being the patroness of men of learning. On this, her life in the Book of Lismore contains the following significant and rather obscure passage:
"Brigit was once with her sheep on the Curragh, and she saw running past her a son of reading, to wit Nindid the scholar was he.
"'What makes thee unsedate, O son of reading?' saith Brigit, 'and what seekest thou in that wise?'
"'O nun,' saith the scholar, 'I am going to heaven.'
"'The Virgin's son knoweth,' said Brigit, 'happy is he that goeth that journey, and for God's sake make prayer with me that it may be easy for me to go.'
"'O nun,' said the scholar, 'I have no leisure, for the gates of heaven are open now and I fear they may be shut against me. Or, if thou art hindering me pray the Lord that it may be easy for me to go to heaven, and I will pray the Lord for thee, that it may be easy for thee, and that thou mayest bring many thousands with thee, into heaven.'
"Brigit recited a paternoster with him. And he was pious thenceforward, and it is he that gave her communion and sacrifice when she was dying. Wherefore thence it came to pass that the comradeship of the world's softs of reading is with Brigit, and the Lord gives them through Brigit every perfect good they ask."
As St. Patrick is pre-eminently the patron saint of Ireland, so is Brigit its patroness, and with the Irish people no Christian name is more common for their boys than Patrick, or for their girls than Brigit. She was universally known as the "Mary of the Gael," and reverenced with a certain chivalric feeling which seems to have been always present with the Gaelic nation in the case of women, for, says her Irish life, her desire "was to satisfy the poor, to expel every hardship, to spare every miserable man.... It is she that helpeth every one who is in a strait or a danger; it is she that abateth the pestilences; it is she that quelleth the anger and the storm of the sea. She is the prophetess of Christ: she is the queen of the south: She is the Mary of the Gael." The writer closes thus in a burst of eloquence:
"Her relics are on earth, with honour and dignity and primacy, with miracles and marvels. Her soul is like a sun in the heavenly kingdom, among the choir of angels and archangels. And though great be her honour here at present, greater by far will it be when she shall arise like a shining lamp, in completeness of body and soul at the great Assembly of Doomsday, in union with cherubim and seraphim, in union with the Son of Mary the Virgin, in the union that is nobler than every union, in the union of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."
As of St. Patrick, so of his great co-evangeliser St. Brigit, there exist quite a number of various lives; the most ancient being probably a metrical life in Irish contained in the Book of Hymns, of which there still exists an eleventh century MS. It consists of fifty-three stanzas of four lines each, and is ascribed to St. Broccan or Brogan Cloen, who seems to have lived at the beginning of the seventh century. This life does little more than expatiate upon Brigit's miracles and virtues. The next life of importance is that already mentioned, by Cogitosus, the Kildare monk, whose date is uncertain, but is clearly prior to the Danish invasions. This life, which is in very creditable Latin, and four others, were printed by Colgan. The first of these four is—probably falsely—attributed to St. Ultan, who died in the middle of the seventh century; the next is by a monk who is called Animosus, but of whom nothing is known, though, as St. Donatus, who became bishop of Fiesole in 824, alludes to his works, he must have been an early author; the third is a twelfth-century work, by Laurence of Durham, an Englishman; and the last is in Latin verse, taken from a MS. which the unwearied Colgan procured from Monte Cassino, and which is attributed to Coelan, a monk of Iniscaltra, who probably lived in the eighth century, while a prologue to this life is prefixed by a later writer, the celebrated Irish bishop of Fiesole, Donatus, who, in the early part of the ninth century, worked with great success in Italy. There is something touching in the language with which this great and successful child of the Gael reverts in his prologue to the home of his childhood:—
"Far in the west they tell of a matchless land, which goes in ancient books by the name of Scotia ; rich in resources this land, having silver, precious stones, vestures and gold, well suited to earth-born creatures as regards its climate, its sun, and its arable soil; that Scotia of lovely fields that flow with milk and honey, hath skill in husbandry, and raiments, and arms, and arts, and fruits. There are no fierce bears there, nor ever has the land of Scotia brought forth savage broods of lions. No poisons hurt, no serpent creeps through the grass, nor does the babbling frog croak and complain by the lake. In this land the Scottish race are worthy to dwell, a renowned race of men in war, in peace, in fidelity."
Whitley Stokes has published the Irish lives of St. Brigit from the Leabhar Breac and the Book of Lismore, and Donatus alludes to other lives by St. Ultan and St. Eleran, so that Brigit has not lacked biographers. She herself is said to have written a rule for her nuns and some other things, and O'Curry prints one Irish poem ascribed to her—in which she prays for the family of heaven to be present at her feast: "I should like the men of heaven in my own house, I should like rivers of peace to be at their disposal," etc.—which appears to be alluded to in the preface to the Litany of Angus the Culdee, as the "great feast which St. Brigit made for Jesus in her heart."
********
Cogitosus, who probably wrote in the beginning of the eighth century, makes no allusion to her slave-parentage, but this was to be expected.
See Stokes, "Three Middle Irish Homilies."
Cill-dara, the "Church of the Oak-tree," now Kildare.
He himself says, "Et quis sermone explicare potest maximum decorem hujus ecclesi? et innumera illius civitatis qu? dicemus miracula ... nullus carnalis adversarius nec concursus timetur hostium, sed civitas est refugii tutissima ... et quis ennumerare potest diversas turbas et innumerabiles populos de omnibus provinciis affluentes, alii ad epularum abundantiam, alii languidi propter sanitates, alii ad spectaculum turbarum, alii cum magnis donis venientes ad solemnitatem Nativitatis S. Brigit? qu? in die Calendarum est," etc. These are the evident outcome of the piping times of peace which Ireland enjoyed in the seventh and eighth centuries. It would have been impossible to have written in this way after the close of the eighth century. See chap. 36 of Cogitosus's life, "Trias Thaumaturga," p. 524 of the Louvain edition.
Thus well summarised by Dr. Healy from the more diffuse Latin of Cogitosus. His description of the church is as follows: It was "solo spatiosa et in altum minaci proceritate porrecta ac decorata pictis tabulis, tria intrinsecus habens oratoria ampla, et divisa parietibus tabulatis." One of the walls was "decoratus, et imaginibus depictus, ac linteaminibus tectus."
This has not escaped Windisch. "W?hrend," he writes, "Patrick nur der christlichen Hagiologie angeh?rt, scheint Brigit zugleich die Erbin einer alten heidnischen Gottheit zu sein. Ihr Wesen enth?lt Ziige die mehr als eine heilig gesprochen Nonne hinter ihr vermuthen lassen." Windisch bases this chiefly upon the expressions in Broccan's hymn, which calls her the mother of Christ, and calls Christ her son, and equates her with Mary. The passage which I have adduced from the Irish life is even more remarkable:
Brigit, writes Whitley Stokes "(cp. Skr. bhargas) was born at sunrise neither within nor without a house, was bathed in milk, her breath revives the dead, a house in which she is staying flames up to heaven, cow-dung blazes before her, oil is poured on her head; she is fed from the milk of a white red-eared cow; a fiery pillar rises over her head; sun rays support her wet cloak; she remains a virgin; and she was one of the two mothers of Christ the Anointed. She has, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, a perpetual ashless fire watched by twenty nuns, of whom herself was one, blown by fans or bellows only, and surrounded by a hedge within which no male could enter" ("Top. Hib." chaps. 34, 35 and 36), from all which Stokes declares that one may without much rashness pick out certain of her life-incidents, as having "originally belonged to the myth or the ritual of some goddess of fire." (See preface to "Three Middle Irish Homilies.")
"Mac-léighinn," which is to this day a usual Irish term for student.
Thus translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes in his "Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore," p. 194. In the original: "Conid assein dorala cumthanus mac leighinn in domuin re Brigit, co tabair in coimdhi doibh tria atach Brigte gach maith fhoirbhthi chuinghid."
Or to speak more accurately no names were more common, but owing to the action of various influences, particularly of the National Board, with unsympathetic persons at its head, and of the men who direct the modern education of the Irish, the people who are not allowed by the National Board to learn history, and who are taught to despise the Irish language, are gradually being made ashamed of any names that are not English, and Patrick and Brigit almost bid fair to follow the way of Cormac, Conn, Felim, Art, Donough, Fergus, Diarmuid, and a score of other Christian names of men in common use a century ago, but now almost wholly extinct, and of Mève, Sive, Eefi, Sheela, Nuala, and as many more female names now nearly or completely obsolete. A woman of some education said to me lately, "God forbid I should handicap my daughter in life by calling her Brigit;" and a Catholic bishop said the other day that too often when an Irish parent abroad did pluck up courage to christen his son "Patrick," he put it in, in a shamefaced whisper, at the end of several other names. This is the direct result of the teaching given by the National Board.
He is said to have written this hymn at the instigation of Ultan, who died in 653, but, as Windisch remarks, mention is probably made of Ultan only because he is said to have been the first to collect the miracles of Brigit—"die Sprache," adds Windisch, "ist alterthümlich; besonders beachtenswerth sind die ziemlich zahlreichen Perfectformen." It is remarkable that the miracles attributed to Brigit are given in the same order in this hymn and in Cogitosus' life of her. The metre is irregular.
"Ni bu Sanct Brigit suanach Ni bu húarach im seirc Dé, Sech ni chiuir ni cossena Ind nóeb dibad bethath che.
"The life by Cogitosus is evidently pre-Danish, and it is more likely to be an extension of the short metrical one, than that the metrical one should be a résumé of it. If this is so it bespeaks a considerable antiquity for the Irish verses.
There is a fragment in the Irish MS. Rawlinson, B. 512, quoted somewhere by Kuno Meyer, which reminds one of this passage. It begins: "Now the island of Ireland, Inis Herenn, has been set in the west. As Adam's Paradise stands at the sunrise, so Ireland stands at the sunset, and they are alike in the nature of their soil," etc.
St. Ultan wrote a beautiful Irish hymn and also a Latin hymn to her—at least they are attributed to him—beginning—
"Christus in nostra insola Que vocatur hibernia Ostensus est hominibus Maximis mirabilibus. Que perfecit per felicem Celestis vite virginem Precellentem pro merito Magno in mundi circulo.
"See Todd's "Liber Hymnorum," vol. ii. p. 58. The Latin orthography of the Irish is seldom quite perfect.
This poem begins:
"Ropadh maith lem corm-lind mór Do righ na righ Ropadh maith lem muinnter nimhe Acca hol tre bithe shír.
"I.e., "I would like a great lake of ale for the King of the kings, I would like the people of heaven to be drinking it through eternal ages," which sounds curious, but Brigit probably meant it allegorically.
The third great patron Saint of Ireland, the man who stands out almost as conspicuously as St. Patrick himself in the religious history of the Gael, the most renowned missionary, scribe, scholar, poet, statesman, anchorite, and school-founder of the sixth century is St. Columcille. Everything about this remarkable man has conspired to fix upon him the imagination of the Irish race. He was not, like St. Patrick, of alien, nor like St. Brigit, of semi-servile birth, but was sprung from the highest and bluest blood of the Irish, being son of Felemidh, son of Fergus, son of Conall Gulban—renowned to this day in saga and romance—son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, that great monarch of Ireland who ravaged Britain and exacted tributes far and wide from his conquered enemies.
He was born on the 7th of December, 521, twenty-nine years after the reputed death of St. Patrick, and four years before that of St. Brigit, at Gartan in Donegal, a wild but beautiful district of which his father was the prince. The reigning monarch of Ireland was his half-uncle, while his mother Ethne was the direct descendant of the royal line of Cáthaoir Mór, the regnant family of Leinster, and he himself would have had some chance of the reversion of the monarchy had he been minded to press his claims. Reared at Kilmacrenan, near Gartan, the place where the O'Donnells were afterwards inaugurated, he received his first teaching at the hands of St. Finnén or Finnian in his famous school at Moville, for already since Patrick's death Ireland had become dotted with such small colleges. It was here at this early age that his school-fellows christened him Colum-cille, or Colum of the Church, on account of the assiduity with which he sought the holy building. At this period the Christian clergy and the bardic order were the only two educational powers in Ireland, and after leaving St. Finnian, Columcille travelled south into Leinster to a bard called Gemmán with whom he took lessons. From him he went to St. Finnén or Finnian of Clonard. While studying at Clonard it was the custom for each of the students to grind corn in his turn at a quern, but Columcille's Irish life in the Book of Lismore tells us na?vely, in true old Irish spirit, "howbeit an angel from heaven used to grind on behalf of Columcille; that was the honour which the Lord used to render him because of the eminent nobleness of his race." St. Ciaran was at this time a fellow-student with him, and Finnian, says the Irish life, saw one night a vision, "to wit, two moons arose from Clonard, a golden moon and a silver moon. The golden moon went into the north of the island, and Ireland and Scotland gleamed under it. The silver moon went on until it stayed by the Shannon, and Ireland at her centre gleamed." That, says the author, signified "Columcille with the grace of his noble kin and his wisdom, and Ciaran with the refulgence of his virtues and his good deeds."
Leaving Clonard behind him, Columcille passed on to yet another school—this time to that of Mobhí at Glasnevin, near Dublin, where there were as many as fifty students at work, living in huts or cells grouped round an oratory, some of whom were famous men in after-time, for they included Cainnech and Comgall and Ciaran. A curious incident is recorded of these three and of Columcille in the Irish life in the Book of Lismore.
Columcille was driven from Glasnevin by the approach of the great plague which ravaged the country, and of which his teacher Mobhí died.
"Once on a time," says the author, "a great church was built by Mobhí. The clerics were considering what each of them would like to have in the church. 'I should like,' said Ciaran, 'its full of church children to attend the canonical hours.' 'I should like,' said Cainnech, 'to have its full of books to serve the sons of life.' 'I should like,' said Comgall, 'its full of affliction and disease to be in my own body: to subdue me and repress me.' Then Columcille chose its full of gold and silver to cover relics and shrines withal. Mobhí said it should not be so, but that Columcille's community would be wealthier than any community, whether in Ireland or in Scotland."
Betaking himself northward with a growing reputation, he was offered by his cousin, then Prince of Aileach, near Derry, and afterwards monarch of Ireland, the site of a monastery on the so-called island of Derry, a rising ground of oval shape, covering some two hundred acres, along the slopes of which flourished a splendid forest of oak-trees, which gave to the oasis its name of Derry or the oak grove. Columcille, like all Gaels—and indeed all Celts—was full of love for everything beautiful in nature, both animate and inanimate, and so careful was he of his beloved oaks that, contrary to all custom, he would not build his church with its chancel towards the east, for in that case some of the oaks would have had to be felled to make room for it. He laid strict injunctions upon all his successors to spare the lovely grove, and enjoined that if any of the trees should be blown down some of them should go for fuel to their own guest-house, and the rest be given to the people.
This was Columcille's first religious institution, and, like every man's firstling, it remained dear to him to the last. Years afterwards, when the thought of it came back to him on the barren shores of Iona, he expressed himself in passionate Irish poetry.
"For oh! were the tributes of Alba mine From shore unto centre, from centre to sea, The site of one house, to be marked by a line In the midst of fair Derry were dearer to me. That spot is the dearest on Erin's ground, For the treasures that peace and that purity lend, For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round, Protecting its borders from end to end. The dearest of any on Erin's ground For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love, Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found To be crowded with angels from heaven above. My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove, My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell, May God the Eternal in Heaven above Send death to thy foes and defend thee well.
"Columcille was yet a young man, only twenty-five years of age, when he founded Derry, but both his own genius, and more especially his great friends and kinsfolk, had conspired to make him famous. For the next seventeen years he laboured in Ireland, and during this time founded the still more celebrated schools of Durrow in the present King's County, and of Kells in Meath, both of which became most famous in after years. Durrow, which, like Derry, was named from the beautiful groves of oak which were scattered along the slope of Druim-caín, or "the pleasant hill," seems to have retained to the last a hold upon the affections of Columcille second only to that of Derry. When its abbot, Cormac the voyager, visited him long years afterwards in Iona, and expressed his unwillingness to return to his monastery again, because, being a Momonian of the race of Eber, the southern Ui Neill were jealous of him, and made his abbacy unpleasant or impossible, Columcille reproached him in pathetic terms for abandoning so lovely an abode—
"With its books and its learning, A devout city with a hundred crosses.
"O Cormac, he exclaimed—
"I pledge thee mine unerring word Which it is not possible to impugn, Death is better in reproachless Erin Than perpetual life in Alba .
"And on another occasion, when it strikes him how happy the son of Dima, i.e., Cormac, must be at the approach of summer along the green hillside of Rosgrencha—another name for Durrow—amid its fair slopes, waving woods, and singing birds, compared with himself exiled to the barren shores of rugged Iona, he bursts forth into the tenderest song—
"How happy the son is of Dima! no sorrow For him is designed, He is having, this hour, round his own cell in Durrow The wish of his mind: The sound of the wind in the elms, like the strings of A harp being played, The note of the blackbird that claps with the wings of Delight in the glade. With him in Rosgrencha the cattle are lowing At earliest dawn, On the brink of the summer the pigeons are cooing And doves on his lawn, etc.
"Columcille continued his labours in Ireland, founding churches and monasteries and schools, until he was forty-two years of age. He was at this time at the height of his physical and mental powers, a man of a masterful but of a too passionate character, of fine physique, and enjoying a reputation second to that of none in Erin. The commentator in the Féilire of Angus describes his appearance as that of "a man well-formed, with powerful frame; his skin was white, his face was broad and fair and radiant, lit up with large, grey, luminous eyes; his large and well-shaped head was crowned, except where he wore his frontal tonsure, with close and curling hair. His voice was clear and resonant, so that he could be heard at the distance of 1,500 paces, yet sweet with more than the sweetness of the bards." His activity was incessant. "Not a single hour of the day," says Adamnan, "did he leave unoccupied without engaging either in prayer, or in reading, or in writing, or in some other work;" and he laboured with his hands as well as with his head, cooking or looking after his ploughmen, or engaged in ecclesiastical or secular matters. All accounts go to show that he was of a hot and passionate temperament, and endowed with both the virtues and the faults that spring from such a character. Indeed this was, no doubt, why in the "famous vision" which Baithin saw concerning him, he was seated only on a chair of glass; while Ciaran was on a chair of gold, and Molaisse upon a chair of silver. The commentator on the Féilire of Angus boldly states that, "though his devotion was delightful, he was carnal and often frail even as glass is fragile." Aware of this, he wore himself out with fastings and vigils, and no doubt—
Lenior et melior fit accedente senectu,
for Adamnan describes him, from the recollections of the monks who knew him, as being angelic in aspect and bright in conversation, and despite his great labours yet "dear to all, displaying his holy countenance always cheerful." A curious story is told in the Leabhar Breac, of the stratagems to which his people resorted to checkmate his self-imposed penance; for having one day seen an old woman living upon pottage of nettles, while she was waiting for her one cow to calve and give her milk, the notion came to him that he too would thenceforward live upon the same, for if she could do so, much more could he, and it would be profitable to his soul in gaining the kingdom of heaven. So, said the writer, he called his servant—
"'Pottage,' saith he, 'from thee every night, and bring not the milk with it.'
"'It shall be done,' said the cook.
"He (the cook) bores the mixing-stick of the pottage, so that it became a pipe, and he used to pour the meat juice into the pipe, down, so that it was mixed through the pottage. That preserves the cleric's (Columcille's) appearance. The monks perceived the cleric's good appearance, and they talked among themselves. That is revealed to Columcille, so he said, 'May your successors be always murmuring.'
"'Well now,' said Columcille, said he, to his servant, 'what dost thou give me every day?'
"'Thou art witness,' said the cook, 'unless it come out of the iron of the pot, or out of the stick wherewith the pottage is mixed, I know nought else in it save pottage!'"
It was now, however, that events occurred which had the result of driving Columcille abroad and launching him upon a more stormy and more dangerous career, as the apostle of Scotland and the Picts. St. Finnian of Moville, with whom he studied in former days, had brought back with him from Rome a copy of the Psalms, probably the first copy of St. Jerome's translation, or Vulgate, that had appeared in Ireland, which he highly valued, and which he did not wish Columcille to copy. Columcille however, who was a dexterous and rapid scribe, found opportunity, by sitting up during several nights, to make a copy of the book secretly, but Finnian learning it claimed the copy. Columcille refused it, and the matter was referred to King Diarmuid at Tara. The monarch, to whom books and their surroundings were probably something new, as a matter for legal dispute, could find in the Brehon law no nearer analogy to adjudicate the case by, than the since celebrated sentence le gach boin a boinín, "with every cow her calf," in which terms he, not altogether unnaturally, decided in favour of St. Finnian, saying, "with every book its son-book, as with every cow her calf." This alone might not have brought about the crisis, but unfortunately the son of the king of Connacht, who had been present at the great Convention or Féis of Tara, in utter violation of the law of sanctuary which alone rendered this great meeting possible, slew the son of the king's steward, and knowing that the penalty was certain death, he fled to the lodging of the northern princes Fergus and Domhnall who immediately placed him under the protection of St. Columcille. This however did not avail him, for King Diarmuid, who was no respecter of persons, had him promptly seized and put to death in atonement for his crime. This, combined with his unfortunate judgment about the book, enraged the imperious Columcille to the last degree. He made his way northward and appealed to his kinsmen to avenge him. A great army was collected, led by Fergus and Domhnall, two first cousins of Columcille, and by the king of Connacht, whose son had been put to death. The High-king marched to meet this formidable combination with all the troops he could gather. Pushing his way across the island he met their combined forces in the present county of Sligo, between Benbulbin and the sea. A furious battle was delivered in which he was defeated with the loss of three thousand men.
It was soon after this battle that Columcille decided to leave Ireland. There is a great deal of evidence that he did so as a kind of penance, either self-imposed or enjoined upon him by St. Molaíse , as Keating says, or by the "synod of the Irish saints," as O'Donnell has it. He had helped to fill all Ireland with arms and bloodshed, and three thousand men had fallen in one battle largely on account of him, and it was not the only appeal to arms which lay upon his conscience. He set sail from his beloved Derry in the year 593, determined, according to popular tradition, to convert as many souls to Christ as had fallen in the battle of Cooldrevna. Amongst the dozen monks of his own order who accompanied him were his two first cousins and his uncle.
It was death and breaking of heart for him to leave the land of Erin, and he pathetically expresses his sorrow in his own Irish verses.
"Too swiftly my coracle flies on her way, From Derry I mournfully turned her prow, I grieve at the errand which drives me to-day To the Land of the Ravens, to Alba, now. * * * * * How swiftly we travel! there is a grey eye Looks back upon Erin, but it no more Shall see while the stars shall endure in the sky Her women, her men, or her stainless shore. From the plank of the oak where in sorrow I lie, I am straining my sight through the water and wind, And large is the tear of the soft grey eye Looking back on the land that it leaves behind. To Erin alone is my memory given, To Meath and to Munster my wild thoughts flow, To the shores of Moy-linny, the slopes of Loch Leven, And the beautiful land the Ultonians know.
"He refers distinctly to the penance imposed upon him by St. Moleesha.
"To the nobles that gem the bright isle of the Gael Carry this benediction over the sea, And bid them not credit Moleesha's tale, And bid them not credit his words of me. Were it not for the word of Moleesha's mouth At the cross of Ahamlish that sorrowful day, I now should be warding from north and from south Disease and distemper from Erin away.
"His mind reverts to former scenes of delight—
"How dear to my heart in yon western land Is the thought of Loch Foyle where the cool waves pour, And the bay of Drumcliff on Cúlcinnê's strand, How grand was the slope of its curving shore! * * * * * O bear me my blessing afar to the West, For the heart in my bosom is broken; I fail. Should death of a sudden now pierce my breast I should die of the love that I bear the Gael!
"Columcille is the first example in the saddened page of Irish history of the exiled Gael grieving for his native land and refusing to be comforted, and as such he has become the very type and embodiment of Irish fate and Irish character. The flag in bleak Gartan, upon which he was born, is worn thin and bare by the hands and feet of pious pilgrims, and "the poor emigrants who are about to quit Donegal for ever, come and sleep on that flag the night before their departure from Derry. Columcille himself was an exile, and they fondly hope that sleeping on the spot where he was born will help them to bear with lighter heart the heavy burden of the exile's sorrows." He is the prototype of the millions of Irish exiles in after ages—
"Ruined exiles, restless, roaming, Longing for their fatherland,
"and the extraordinary deep roots which his life and poetry have struck into the soil of the North was strikingly evidenced this very year (1898) by the wonderful celebration of his centenary at Gartan, at which many thousands of people, who had travelled all night over the surrounding mountains, were present, and where it was felt to be so incongruous that the life of such a great Irish patriot, prince, and poet, in the diocese, too, of an O'Donnell, should be celebrated in English, that—probably for the first time in this century—Irish poems were read and Irish speeches made, even by the Cardinal-Primate and the Bishop of the diocese.
Of Columcille's life on the craggy little island of Iona, of his splendid labours in converting the Picts, and of the monastery which he established, and which, occupied by Irish monks, virtually rendered Iona an Irish island for the next six hundred years, there is no need to speak here, for these things belong rather to ecclesiastical than to literary history.
Columcille himself was an unwearied scribe, and delighted in poetry. Ample provision was made for the multiplication of books in all the monasteries which he founded, and his Irish life tells us that he himself wrote "three hundred gifted, lasting, illuminated, noble books." The life in the Book of Lismore tells us that he once went to Clonmacnois with a hymn he had made for St. Ciaran, 'for he made abundant praises for God's household, as said the poet,
"Noble, thrice fifty, nobler than every apostle, The number of miracles are as grass, Some in Latin, which was beguiling, Others in Gaelic, fair the tale.'
"Of these only three in Latin are now known to exist, whilst of the great number of Irish poems attributed to him only a few—half a dozen at the most—are likely to be even partly genuine. His best known hymn is the "Altus," so called from its opening word; it was first printed by Colgan, and its genuineness is generally admitted. It is a long and rudely-constructed poem, of twenty-two stanzas, preserved in the Book of Hymns, a MS. probably of the eleventh century. Each stanza consists of six lines, and each line of sixteen syllables. There is a pause after the eighth syllable, and a kind of rhyme between every two lines. The first verses run thus with an utter disregard of quantity.
"Altus pros?tor, vetustus dierum et ingenitus, Erat absque origine primordii et crepidine, Est et erit in s?cula s?culorum infinitus, Cui est unigenitus Christus et Spiritus Sanctus, etc.
"The second Latin hymn is a supplement to this one, composed in praise of the Trinity, because Pope Gregory who, as the legend states, perceived the angels listening when the "Altus" was recited to him, was yet of opinion that the first stanza of the original poem, despite its additional line, was insufficient to express a competent laudation of the mystery, consequently Columcille added, it was said, fifteen rude-rhyming couplets of the same character as the "Altus," but it is very doubtful whether they are genuine. The third hymn, the "Noli Pater," is still shorter, consisting of only seven rhyming couplets with sixteen syllables in each line. It was in ancient times considered an efficient safeguard against fire and lightning. Some of his reputed Irish poems we have already glanced at; three that Colgan considered genuine were printed by Dr. Reeves in his "Adamnan;" and another, the touching "Farewell to Ara," is contained in the "Gaelic Miscellany" of 1808; and another on his escape from King Diarmuid, when the king of Connacht's son was put to death for violating the Féis at Tara, is printed in the "Miscellany" of the Irish Arch?ological Society. There are three verses, composed by him as a prayer at the battle of Cooldrevna, ascribed to him in the "Chronicon Scotorum;" and there is a collection of fifteen poems attributed to him in the O'Clery MSS. at Brussels, and nearly a hundred more—mostly evident forgeries—in the Bodleian at Oxford. He does not seem to have ever written any work in prose.
There are six lives of Columcille still extant, the greatest of them all being that in Latin by Adamnan, who was one of his successors in the abbacy of Iona, and who was born only twenty-seven years after Columcille's death. This admirable work, written in flowing and very fair Latin, was derived, as Adamnan himself tells us, partly from oral and partly from written sources. A memoir of Columcille had already been written by Cuimine Finn or Cummeneus Albus, as Adamnan calls him, the last Abbot of Iona but one before himself, and that memoir he almost entirely embodied in his third book. He had also some other written accounts before him, and the Irish poems, both of the saint himself and of other bards, amongst them Baithine Mór, who had enjoyed his personal friendship, and St. Mura, who was a little his junior—poems now lost. He had also constant opportunities of conversing with those who had seen the great saint and had been familiar with him in life, and he was writing on the spot and amidst the associations and surroundings wherein his last thirty years had been spent, and which were inseparably connected with his memory. The result was that he produced a work, which although not ostensibly a history, and dealing only with the life of a single man, and that rather from the transcendental than from the practical side, is nevertheless of the utmost value to the historian on account not only of the general picture of manners and customs, but still more on account of its incidental references to contemporary history. "It is," says Pinkerton, who, as Dr. Reeves remarks, was a writer not over-given to eulogy, "the most complete piece of such biography that all Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period but even through the whole Middle Ages." Adamnan's other great work on Sacred Places is mentioned by his contemporary, the Venerable Bede, but he is silent as to Columcille's life. There is, however, abundant internal evidence of its authenticity. This evidence, however it might satisfy the minds of mere Irish students like Colgan and Stephen White, proved insufficient, however, to meet the exacting claims of certain British scholars. "I cannot agree," said Sir James Dalrymple, in the last century, "that the authority of Adamnanus is equal, far less preferable to that of Bede, since it was agreed on all hands to be a fabulous history lately published in his name, and that he was remarkable for nothing, but that he was the first abbot of that monastery who quit the Scottish institution, and became fond of the English Romish Rites." Dr. Giles, too, who thought of editing it, tells us in his translation of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History," that he had "strong doubts of Adamnan's having written it." And, finally, Schoell, a German, professed to have convinced himself that Adamnan's preface could not have been written by the same hand which wrote the life, so different did the style of the two appear to him, and wholly rejected it as a work of the seventh century written at Iona.
But it so happened that shortly before the year 1851, when Schoell was impugning the genuineness of this work, the ancient manuscript from which it had been copied by the Irish Jesuit, Stephen White—and, from his copy, printed by Colgan—actually came to light again, discovered by Dr. Ferdinand Keller at the bottom of an old book-shelf in the public library of Schaffhausen, into which it had been turned with some other old manuscripts and books. A close examination of this remarkable text written in a heavy round Irish hand, in nearly the same type of script as the Books of Kells and Durrow, and of a more archaic character than that of the Book of Armagh (written in 807), rendered it certain that here was a codex of great value and antiquity. Nor was the usual colophon containing the scribe's name and asking a prayer for him missing. That name was Dorbene, a most rare one, of which only two instances are known, both connected with Iona, the first of which records the death of Faelcu, son of Dorbene, in 729, but as we know that Faelcu died in his eighty-second year his father could hardly have been the scribe. The other Dorbene was elected abbot of Iona in 713 and died the same year, so that it may be regarded as almost certain that this book was written by him and that this copy is in his handwriting. We have in this codex, then, the actual handwriting of a contemporary of Adamnan himself, the handiwork of the generation which succeeded Columcille, a volume a hundred years older than even the Book of Armagh, a volume which had been carried over to some of the numerous Irish institutions on the Continent after the break-up of Iona by the Northmen. There are several corrections of the orthography in a different and later hand, the date of which is fixed by Dr. Keller at 800-820, and these are evidently the work of a German monk, who was displeased with the peculiar orthography of the Irish school, and who made these emendations after the MS. had been brought from Iona to the Continent. The following passage describing the last hours of Columcille will both serve as a specimen of Adamnan's style and also afford a minutely particular account of the end of this great man. Its accuracy can hardly be impugned as it is written by one who had every minute particular from eye-witnesses, and as the actual manuscript from which it is printed was copied from the author's own, either during his life or within less than ten years after his death.
Adamnan first tells us of several premonitions which the saint had of his approaching end, how he, "now an old man, wearied with age," was borne in his waggon to view his monks labouring in the fields on the western slope of the island, and intimated to them that his end was not far off, but that lest their Easter should be one of grief, he would not be taken from them until it was over. Later on in the year he went out with his servant Diarmuid to inspect the granary, and was pleased at the two large heaps of grain which were lying there, and remarked that though he should be taken from his dear monks, yet he was glad to see that they had a supply for the year.
"And," says Adamnan, "when Diarmuid his servant heard this he began to be sad, and said, 'Father, at this time of year you sadden us too often, because you speak frequently about your decease.' When the saint thus answered, 'I have a secret word to tell you, which, if you promise me faithfully not to make it known to any before my death, I shall be able to let you know more clearly about my departure.' And when his servant, on bended knees, had finished making this promise, the venerable man thus continued, 'This day is called in the sacred volumes the Sabbath, which is interpreted Rest. And this day is indeed to me a sabbath, because it is my last of this present laborious life, in which, after the trouble of my toil, I take my rest; for in the middle of this coming sacred Sunday night, I shall to use the Scripture phrase, tread the way of my fathers; for now my Lord Jesus Christ deigns to invite me, to whom, I say, at the middle of this night, on His own invitation, I shall pass over; for it was thus revealed to me by the Lord Himself.' His servant, hearing these sad words, begins to weep bitterly: whom the saint endeavoured to console as much as he was able.
"After this the saint goes forth from the barn, and returning to the monastery sits down on the way, at the place where afterwards a cross let into a millstone, and to-day standing there, may be perceived on the brink of the road. And while the saint, wearied with old age, as I said before, sitting in that place was taking a rest, lo! the white horse, the obedient servant who used to carry the milk-vessels between the monastery and the byre, meets him. It, wonderful to relate, approached the saint and placing its head in his bosom, by the inspiration of God, as I believe, for whom every animal is wise with the measure of sense which his Creator has bidden, knowing that his master was about to immediately depart from him, and that he would see him no more, begins to lament and abundantly to pour forth tears, like a human being, into the saint's lap, and with beslavered mouth to make moan. Which when the servant saw, he proceeds to drive away the tearful mourner, but the saint stopped him, saying, 'Allow him, allow him who loves me, to pour his flood of bitterest tears into this my bosom. See, you, though you are a man and have a rational mind, could have in no way known about my departure if I had not myself lately disclosed it to you, but to this brute and irrational animal the Creator Himself, in His own way, has clearly revealed that his master is about to depart from him.' And saying this he blessed the sorrowful horse servant, as it turned away from him.
"And going forth from thence and ascending a small hill, which rose over the monastery, he stood for a little upon its summit, and as he stood, elevating both his palms, he blessed his community and said, 'Upon this place however narrow and mean, not only shall the kings of the Scots with their peoples, but also the rulers of foreign and barbarous nations with the people subject to them, confer great and no ordinary honour. By the saints of other churches also, shall no common respect be accorded it.'
"After these words, going down from the little hill and returning to the monastery, he sat in his cell writing a copy of the Psalms, and on reaching that verse of the thirty-third Psalm where it is written, 'But they that seek the Lord shall lack no thing that is good;' 'Here,' said he, 'we may close at the end of the page; let Baithin write what follows.' Well appropriate for the parting saint was the last verse which he had written, for to him shall good things eternal be never lacking, while to the father who succeeded him , the teacher of his spiritual sons, the following were particularly apposite, 'Come, my sons, hearken unto me. I shall teach you the fear of the Lord,' since as the departing one desired, he was his successor not only in teaching but also in writing.
"After writing the above verse and finishing the page, the saint enters the church for the vesper office preceding the Sunday; which finished, he returned to his little room, and rested for the night on his couch, where for mattress he had a bare flag, and for pillow a stone, which at this day stands as a kind of commemorative monument beside his tomb. And there, sitting, he gives his last mandates to the brethren, in the hearing of his servant only, saying, 'These last words of mine I commend to you, O little children, that ye preserve a mutual charity with peace, and a charity not feigned amongst yourselves; and if ye observe to do this according to the example of the holy fathers, God, the comforter of the good, shall help you, and I, remaining with Him, shall make intercession for you, and not only the necessaries of this present life shall be sufficiently supplied you by Him, but also the reward of eternal good, prepared for the observers of things Divine, shall be rendered you.' Up to this point the last words of our venerable patron passing as it were from this wearisome pilgrimage to his heavenly country, have been briefly narrated.
"After which, his joyful last hour gradually approaching, the saint was silent. Then soon after, when the struck bell resounded in the middle of the night, quickly rising he goes to the church, and hastening more quickly than the others he entered alone, and with bent knees inclines beside the altar in prayer. His servant, Diarmuid, following more slowly, at the same moment beholds, from a distance, the whole church inside filled with angelic light round the saint; but as he approached the door this same light, which he had seen, swiftly vanished; which light a few others of the brethren, also standing at a distance, had seen. Diarmuid then entering the church, calls aloud with a voice choked with tears, 'Where art thou, Father?' And the lamps of the brethren not yet being brought, groping in the dark, he found the saint recumbent before the altar: raising him up a little, and sitting beside him, he placed the sacred head in his own bosom. And while this was happening a crowd of monks running up with lights, and seeing their father dying, begin to lament. And as we have learned from some who were there present, the saint, his soul not yet departing, with eyes upraised, looked round on each side, with a countenance of wondrous joy and gladness, as though beholding the holy angels coming to meet him. Diarmuid then raises up the saint's right hand to bless the band of monks. But the venerable father himself, too, in so far as he was able, was moving his hand at the same time, so that he might appear to bless the brethren with the motion of his hand, what he could not do with his voice, during his soul's departure. And after thus signifying his sacred benediction, he straightway breathed forth his life. When it had gone forth from the tabernacle of his body, the countenance remained so long glowing and gladdened in a wonderful manner by the angelic vision, that it appeared not that of a dead man but of a living one sleeping. In the meantime the whole church resounded with sorrowful lamentations."
Besides the lives of Columcille, written by Adamnan and Cummene, at least four more exist; an anonymous life in Latin, printed by Colgan and erroneously supposed by him to be that of Cummene; a life by John of Tinmouth, chiefly compiled from Adamnan, which is also printed by Colgan; the old Irish life contained in four Irish MSS., namely, in the Leabhar Breac, in the Book of Lismore, in a vellum MS. in Edinburgh, and in an Irish parchment volume found by the Revolutionary Commissioners, during the Republic, in a private house in Paris, and by them presented to the Royal Library of that city—
Qu? regio in terris nostri non plena laboris!
This life has been printed from the Book of Lismore by Dr. Whitley Stokes. The last and most copious life is a compilation of all existing documents and poems both in Latin and Old Irish, and was made by order of O'Donnell in 1532.
"Be it known," says the preface, "to the readers of this Life that it was Manus, son of Hugh, son of Hugh Roe, son of Niall Garv, son of Turlough of the wise O'Donnell, who ordered the part of this Life which was in Latin to be put into Gaelic; and who ordered the part that was in difficult Gaelic to be modified, so that it might be clear and comprehensible to every one; and who gathered and put together the parts of it that were scattered through the old Books of Erin; and who dictated it out of his own mouth with great labour and a great expenditure of time in studying how he should arrange all its parts in their proper places, as they are left here in writing by us; and in love and friendship for his illustrious saint, relative, and patron, to whom he was devoutly attached. It was in the Castle of Port-na-tri-námhad that his Life was indited, when were fulfilled 12 years and 20 and 500 and 1000 of the age of the Lord."
This life, written in a large vellum folio, is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and has never yet been printed.
The remains of Columcille, which after a three days' wake were interred in Iona, were left undisturbed for close upon a hundred years. They were afterwards disinterred and placed within a splendid shrine of gold and silver, which, in due time, became the prey of the marauding Norsemen. The belief is very general that his remains found their last resting-place in Downpatrick, along with those of St. Patrick and St. Brigit. The present appearance of the spot where they are supposed to lie, may be gathered from the indignant verses of a member of a now defunct literary body, to which I had the honour of belonging some years ago, one of those numerous Irish literary societies which produce verses as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.
"I stood at a grave by the outer wall Of the Strangers' Church in Down, All lorn and lost in neglect, and crossed By the Church of the Strangers' frown. All lorn and waste, and with footsteps crossed The grave of our Patrons Three, Not a leaf to wave o'er that lonely grave That seemed not a grave to me! But a trench where some traitor was flung of yore— 'Twas a sight for a foeman's eye""!
"Where Patrick still and Saint Columbkille
And the Dove of the Oak Tree lie.
* * * * *
Those men who spoke bravely of rending chains
(And never a fetter broke!)
Those men who adored the flashing sword
(When never a tocsin spoke!)
Those little men, who are very great
In marble and bronze, are still
The city's pride, whilst that trench holds Bride
And Patrick and Columbkille!"
********
Also often called St. Columba, to be strictly distinguished from Columbanus, who laboured on the Continent. The name is written sometimes Colomb Cille and Colum Kille or Columkille. It is pronounced in Irish Cullum-kill?, and means literally the "Dove of the Church," but in English the name is generally pronounced Columkill.
As calculated by Dr. Reeves, who coincides with the "Four Masters" and Dr. Lanigan. The other Annals waver between 518 and 523.
See the lines in O'Donnell's life of the saint, ascribed to St. Mura:
"Rugadh i nGartan da dheóin / S do h-oileadh i gCill mhic Neóin 'S do baisteadh mac na maise / A dTulaigh De Dubhghlaise.
"He is called "Germán the Master" in the Book of Lismore life. In the life of Finnian of Clonard he is called Carminator nomine gemanus, who brings to St. Finnian "quoddam carmen magnificum."
A similar story of Cummain the Tall, of Guaire the Connacht king who still gives his name to the town of Gort, which is Gort Inse-Guaire, and of Cáimine of Inisceltra, is told in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, and printed by Whitley Stokes in a note at p. 304 of his "Lives from the Book of Lismore." Each of the three got as he had desired, for, says the chronicler, "all their musings were made true. The earth was given to Guaire. Wisdom was given to Cummain. Diseases and sicknesses were inflicted on Cáimine, so that no bone of him joined together in the earth, but melted and decayed with the anguish of every disease and of every tribulation, so that they all went to heaven according to their musings." (See for the same story the Yellow Book of Lecan, p. 132, of facsimile.)
Literally, "Were the tribute of all Alba mine, from its centre to its border, I would prefer the site of one house in the middle of Derry. The reason I love Derry is for its quietness, for its purity, and for the crowds of white angels from the one end to the other. The reason why I love Derry is for its quietness, for its purity, crowded full of heaven's angels in every leaf of the oaks of Derry. My Derry, my little oak grove, my dwelling and my little cell, O Eternal God in heaven above, woe be to him who violates it."
"Is aire, caraim Doire Ar a reidhe, ar a ghloine, 's ar iomatt a aingel find On chind go soich aroile.
"This poem is taken from a Brussels MS., copied by Michael O'Clery for Father Colgan, and by him accepted apparently as genuine. Some of it may very well be so, only, as usual, it has been greatly altered and modified in transcription, as may be seen from the above verse. (See p. 288 of Reeves' "Adamnan.") Some of the verses are evidently interpelations, but the Irish life in the Book of Lismore distinctly attributes to him the verse which I have here given, going out of its way to quote it in full, but the third line is a little different as quoted in the life: "ár is lomlan aingeal bhfinn."
In Irish Dair-magh, "oak-plain." Columcille seems to have been particularly fond of the oak, for his Irish life tells us that it was under a great oak-tree that he resided while at Kells also. The writer adds, "and it"—the great oak-tree—"remained till these latter times, when it fell through the crash of a mighty wind. And a certain man took somewhat of its bark to tan his shoes with. Now, when he did on the shoes, he was smitten with leprosy from his sole to his crown." It is well known to this day that it is unlucky, or worse, to touch a saint's tree. I have been observing one that was, when in the last stage of decrepitude, blown down a few years ago at the well of St. Aracht or Atracta, a female saint of Connacht in the plains of Boyle; yet, though the people around are nearly famished for want of fuel, not one twig of it has yet been touched. In the Edinburgh MS. of Columcille's life we read how on another occasion he made a hymn to arrest a fire that was consuming the oak-wood, "and it is sung against every fire and against every thunder from that time to this." (See Skene's "Celtic Scotland," vol. ii. pp. 468-507.)
"Is sí mo cubhus gan col
's nocha conagar m' eiliughadh
Ferr écc ind Eirind cen ail
Ina sir beatha ind Aipuin."
For the whole of this poem, in the form of a dialogue between Cormac and Columcille, see p. 264 of Reeves' "Adamnan." It is very hard to say how much or how little of these poems is really Columcille's. Colgan was inclined to think them genuine. Of course, as we now have them, the language is greatly modernised; but I am inclined to agree with Dr. Healy, who judges them rather from internal than from linguistic evidence; and while granting, of course, that they have been retouched by later bards, adds, "but in our opinion they represent substantially poems that were really written by the saint. They breathe his pious spirit, his ardent love for nature, and his undying affection for his native land. Although retouched, perhaps, by a later hand, they savour so strongly of the true Columbian spirit that we are disposed to reckon them amongst the genuine compositions of the saint." ("Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 329.) "The older pieces here preserved," says Dr. Robert Atkinson in his preface to the contents of the facsimile of the Book of Leinster, "and of whose genuineness and authenticity there seems no room for doubt, ex. gr., the Poems of Colum Cille, bear with them the marks of the action of successive transcribers, whose desire to render them intelligible has obscured the linguistic proofs of their age."
Literally, "How happy the son of Dima of the devout church, when he hears in Durrow the desire of his mind, the sound of the wind against the elms when 'tis played, the blackbird's joyous note when he claps his wings; to listen at early dawn in Rosgrencha to the cattle, the cooing of the cuckoo from the tree on the brink of summer," etc. (See Reeves' "Adamnan," p. 274).
"Fuaim na goithi ris in leman ardos peti Longaire luin duibh conati ar mben a eti.
"He himself refers to his "grey eye looking back to Erin" in one of his best-known poems.
In token of which is the Irish quatrain quoted in his life—
"Son a ghotha Coluim cille, mór a binne os gach cléir go ceann cúig ceád déag céimeann, Aídhbhle réimeann, eadh ba réill.
""So then Baithine related to him the famous vision, to wit, three chairs seen by him in heaven, even a chair of gold and a chair of silver and a chair of glass. Columcille explained the vision. Ciaran the Great, the carpenter's son, is the chair of gold for the greatness of his charity and his mercy. Molaisse is the chair of silver because of his wisdom and his piety. I myself am the chair of glass because of my affection, for I prefer the Gaels to the men of the world, and Kinel Conall to the Gaels, and the kindred of Lughid to the Kinel Conall." (Leabhar Breac, quoted by Stokes, "Irish Lives," p. 303; but the reason here given for being seated on a chair of glass is, as Stokes remarks, unmeaning.)
"Jejunationum quoque et vigiliarum indefessis laboribus sine ulla intermissione, die noctu-que ita occupatus ut supra humanam possibilitatem uniuscujusque pondus specialis videretur opens," says Adamnan in the preface to his first book.
"Erat enim aspectu angelicus, sermone nitidus, opere sanctus, ingenio optimus, consilio magnus ... et inter h?c omnibus carus, hilarem semper faciem ostendens sanctam, spiritus sancti gaudio intimis l?tificabatur pr?cordiis."
This copy made by Columcille is popularly believed to be the celebrated codex known as the Cathach or "Battler," which was an heirloom of the saint's descendants, the O'Donnells. It was always carried three times round their army when they went to battle, on the breast of a cleric, who, if he were free from mortal sin, was sure to bring them victory. The Mac Robartaighs were the ancestral custodians of the holy relic, and Cathbar O'Donnell, the chief of the race at the close of the eleventh century, constructed an elaborately splendid shrine or cover for it. This precious heirloom remained with the O'Donnells until Donal O'Donnell, exiled in the cause of James II., brought it with him to the Continent and fixed a new rim upon the casket with his name and date. It was recovered from the Continent in 1802 by Sir Neal O'Donnell, and was opened by Sir William Betham soon after. This would in the previous century have been considered a deadly crime, for "it was not lawful" to open the Cathach; as it was, Sir Neal's widow brought an action in the Court of Chancery against Sir William Betham for daring to open it. There turned out to be a decayed wooden box inside the casket, and inside this again was a mass of vellum stuck together and hardened into a single lump. By long steeping in water however, and other treatment, the various leaves came asunder, and it was found that what it contained was really a Psalter, written in Latin, in a "neat but hurried hand." Fifty-eight leaves remained, containing from the 31st to the 106th Psalm, and an examination of the text has shown that it really does contain a copy of the second revision of the Psalter by St. Jerome, which helps to strengthen the belief that this may have been the very book for which three thousand warriors fought and fell in the Battle of Cooldrevna.
Keating says that this account of the affair was preserved in the Black Book of Molaga, one of his ancient authorities now lost. The king decided, says Keating, "gorab leis gach leabhar a mhaic-leabhar, mar is le gach boinn a boinín."
"These were," says the commentator on St. Columcille's hymn, the "Altus," "the three battles which he had caused in Erin, viz., the battle of Cúl-Rathain, between him and Comgall, contending for a church, viz., Ross Torathair; and the battle of Bealach-fheda of the weir of Clonard; and the battle of Cúl Dremhne in Connacht, and it was against Diarmait Mac Cerball , he fought them both." Keating's account also agrees with this, but Reeves has shown that the two later battles in which he was implicated probably took place after his exile.
Literally: "How rapid the speed of my coracle and its stern turned towards Derry. I grieve at the errand over the proud sea, travelling to Alba of the Ravens. There is a grey eye that looks back upon Erin: it shall not see during life the men of Erin nor their wives. My vision o'er the brine I stretch from the ample oaken planks; large is the tear from my soft grey eye when I look back upon Erin. Upon Erin is my attention fixed, upon Loch Leven , upon Linè , upon the land the Ultonians own, upon smooth Munster, upon Meath.... Carry my benediction over the sea to the nobles of the Island of the Gael, let them not credit Moleesha's words nor his threatened persecution. Were it not for Moleesha's words at the Cross of Ahamlish, I should not permit during my life disease or distemper in Ireland.... Beloved to my heart also in the west is Drumcliff at Cúlcinne's strand: to behold the fair Loch Foyle, the form of its shores is delightful.... Take my blessing with thee to the west, broken is my heart in my breast, should sudden death overtake me it is for my great love of the Gael."
Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 293. A fact which is also confirmed by Dr. Reeves, p. lxviii of his "Adamnan," where he says: "The country people believe that whoever sleeps a night on this stone will be free from home-sickness when he goes abroad, and for this reason it has been much resorted to by emigrants on the eve of their departure." I cannot say whether the breaking up of old ties produced by the National Board—which has elsewhere so skilfully robbed the people of their birthright—may not have put an end to this custom within the last few years.
"Deoraidhe gan sgith gan sos,
Mianaid a dtír 's a ndúthchas."
This verse was either composed or quoted by John O'Mahony, the Fenian Head-centre, when in America.
Also in the "Liber Hymnorum," vol. ii.; and again in 1882 with a prose paraphrase and notes by the Marquis of Bute, who says: "the intrinsic merits of the composition are undoubtedly very great, especially in the latter capitula , some of which the editor thinks would not suffer by comparison with the Dies Ir?." Dr. Dowden, Bishop of Edinburgh, has printed, in his pleasant little volume on the "Celtic Church in Scotland," p. 323, a most admirable translation of it into English verse by the Rev. Anthony Mitchell.
Except the first stanza, which being in honour of the Holy Trinity has seven lines.
This poem begins—
"M'?nuran dam is in sliab, A rig grian rop sorad sed, Nocha n-eaglaigi dam ní, Na du mbeind tri ficit céd.
"I find other verses attributed to him in the MS marked H 1. 11. in Trinity College, Dublin.
Laud, 615.
Edited in 1857 for the Irish Arch?ological Society by Dr. Reeves, afterwards Bishop of Down, with all the perfection which the most accurate scholarship and painstaking research could accomplish. It is not too much to say that his name is likely to remain in the future associated with those of Adamnan and Columcille.
Book iii., chapter 5 of Adamnan's "Life of Columcille."
Alluding to the fact that Adamnan tried to persuade his countrymen to change their mode of calculating Easter, and to adopt the Roman tonsure. Sir James Dalrymple is here engaged in defending the Presbyterian view of church government.
"It is to be hoped," Dr. Reeves caustically remarked, "that the doubts originated in a different style of research from that which made Bede's Columcilli an island, and Dearmach the same as Derry!"
"It may be objected," says Dr. Reeves, "that it was written by another person of this name, or copied by a later hand from the autograph of this Dorbene. The former exception is not probable, the name being almost unique, and found so pointedly connected with the Columbian society; the latter is less probable, as the colophon in Irish MSS. is always peculiar to the actual scribe and likely to be omitted in transcription, as is the case of later MSS. of the same recension preserved in the British Museum." "Hoc ipsum MS. credi posset authographum Dorbbenei," says Van der Meer, a learned monk, "subscriptio enim illa in rubro vix ab alio descriptore addita fuisset; characteres quoque antiquitatem sapiunt s?culi octavi."
He died in 704, and Dorbene the scribe in 713. It is necessary to be thus particular, even at the risk of being tedious, to correct the unlearned assertions of people who can write that in treating of the "lives of St. Patrick and St. Columba, one's faith is tried to the uttermost, leading not a few to deny the very existence of the two missionaries" ("Irish Druids and Religions," Borwick, p. 304); or the biassed dicta of men like Ledwich who says that all Irish MSS. "savour of modern forgery."
"Post h?c verba de illo descendens monticellulo, et ad monasterium revertens, sedebat in tugurio Psalterium scribens; et ad ilium tricesimi tertii psalmi versiculum perveniens ubi scribitur, Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono, Hic, ait, in fine cessandum est pagin?; qu? vero sequuntur Baitheneus scribat. Sancto convenienter congruit decessori novissimus versiculus quem scripserat, cui numquam bona deficient ?terna: succesori vero sequens patri, spiritalium doctori filiorum, Venite filii, audite me, timorem Domini docebo vos, congruenter convenit; qui, sicut decessor commendavit, non solo ei docendo sed etiam scribendo successit."
It is still shown at the east end of the Cathedral in Iona, surrounded by an iron cage to keep off tourists.
"The saint had previously attended at the vespertinalis Dominic? noctis missa, an office equivalent to the nocturnal vigil, and now at the turn of midnight the bell rings for matins, which were celebrated according to ancient custom a little before daybreak."—Reeves. The early bells were struck like gongs, not rung, hence the modern Irish for "ring the bell" is bain an clog, "strike the bell."
This scene took place, as Dr. Reeves has shown, "just after midnight between Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 9th of June, in the year 597."
It is to be hoped that it may soon see the light as one of the volumes whose publication is contemplated by the new Irish Texts Society. The copy of it used by Colgan is now back in the Franciscans' Library in Dublin, a beautiful vellum written for Niall óg O'Neill.
P. 50 of a little volume called "Lays and Lyrics of the Pan-Celtic Society," long out of print, by P. O'C. MacLaughlin.
Evidently alluding to the passage in her Irish life which says, "Her type among created things is as the Dove among birds, the vine among trees, and the sun above stars." There is a Latin distich on this grave in Downpatrick which I have seen somewhere,
In burgo Duno tumulo tumulantur in uno
Brigida Patricius atque Columba pius.
St. Patrick and the early Christians of the fifth century spent much of their time and labour in the conversion of pagans and the building of churches. Columcille and the leading churchmen of the sixth century, on the other hand, gave themselves up more to the foundation of monastic institutions and the conduct of schools. They belonged to what is well known in Irish ecclesiastical history as the second Order of Saints. The first Order was composed of Patrick and his associates, bishops filled with piety, founders of churches, three hundred and fifty in number, mostly Franks, Romans, and Britons, but with some Scots also amongst them. These worshipped, says the ancient "Catalogue of the Saints," one head—Christ, and followed one leader—Patrick. They had one tonsure, one celebration of the Mass, and one Easter. They mixed freely in the society of women, because they feared not the wind of temptation, and this first Order of Saints, as it is called, is reckoned by the Irish to have lasted during four reigns.
The next Order of Saints had few bishops but many priests, this was the order to which Columcille belonged, and most of the saints who founded the great schools of Ireland which in the following century became so flourishing and spread their fame throughout Europe, as those of Ciaran and Finnian and Brendan, and a score of others. This Order shunned all association with women, and would not have them in their monasteries. These saints whilst worshipping God as their head, and celebrating one Easter and having one tonsure, yet had different rites for celebrating, and different rules for living. The rite with which they celebrated Mass they are said to have secured from the British saints, St. David, St. Gildas, and others. They also lasted for four reigns, or, roughly speaking, during the last three quarters of the sixth century.
After these came what is called the third Order of Saints who appear in their time to have been pre-eminent amongst the other Christians, and to have been mostly anchorites, who lived on herbs and supported themselves by such alms as they were given, despising all things earthly and all things fleshly. They observed Easter differently, they had different tonsures, they had different rules of life, and different rites for celebrating Mass. They are said to have numbered about a hundred and to have lasted down to the time of the great plague in 664.
This third Order, says the writer of the "Catalogue of Saints," who gives their names, was holy, the second holier, but the first Order was most holy. "The first glowed like the sun in the fervour of their charity, the second cast a pale radiance like the moon, the third shone like the aurora. These three Orders the blessed Patrick foreknew, enlightened by heavenly wisdom, when in prophetic vision he saw at first all Ireland ablaze, and afterwards only the mountains on fire, and at last saw lamps lit in the valleys."
By the middle of the sixth century Ireland had been honeycombed from shore to shore with schools, monasteries, colleges, and foundations of all kinds belonging to the Christian community, and books had multiplied to a marvellous extent. At the same time the professional bards flourished in such numbers that Keating says that "nearly a third of the men of Ireland belonged, about that period, to the poetic order." Omitting for the present the consideration of the bards and the non-Christian literature of poem and saga—mostly anonymous—which they produced, we must, take a rapid survey of some of the most important of the Christian schools, whose pious professors, whose number, and whose learning, secured for Ireland the title of the Island of Saints. We have already seen how the three patron saints of Ireland established their schools in Armagh, Kildare, and Iona, and their example was followed by hundreds.
St. Enda, the son of a king of Oriel, after having studied at some school in Great Britain (probably with St. Ninian—who is said to have been himself an Irishman—at his noble monastery of Candida Casa in Galloway, built about the year 400), and after travelling through various parts of Ireland, settled down finally about the year 483 in the rocky and inaccessible island of Aran Mór, and was the first of those holy men who have won for it the appellation of Aran of the Saints. "One hundred and twenty-seven saints sleep in the little square yard around Killeany Church" alone, and we are told that the countless numbers of saints who have mingled their clay with the holy soil of Aran will never be known until the day of Judgment. Here most of the saints of the second Order repaired sooner or later, to be instructed by, or to hold converse with St. Enda; amongst them Brendan the Voyager, whose wanderings, under the title of Navigatio Brendani, became so well known in later ages to all medi?val Europe. To him also came St. Finnian of Clonard, who was himself celebrated in later days as the "Tutor of the Saints of Erin." From the remote north came Finnian of Moville, Columcille's first teacher, and Ciaran, the carpenter's son, the illustrious founder of Clonmacnois. St. Jarlath of Tuam was there too, with St. Carthach the elder, of Lismore, and with St. Keevin of Glendalough. St. Columcille himself was amongst Enda's visitors, and tore himself away with the utmost difficulty, solacing himself by recourse to the Irish muse as was his wont—
"Farewell from me to Ara's Isle, Her smile is at my heart no more, No more to me the boon is given With hosts of heaven to walk her shore. How far, alas! how far, alas! Have I to pass from Ara's view, To mix with men from Mona's fen, With men from Alba's mountains blue. Bright orb of Ara, Ara's sun, Ah! softly run through Ara's sky, To rest beneath thy beam were sweeter Than lie where Paul and Peter lie. O Ara, darling of the West, Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee, O God, cut short her foeman's breath, Let Hell and Death his portion be. O Ara, darling of the West, Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee, Herdless and childless may he go In endless woe his doom is dree. O Ara, darling of the West, Ne'er be he blest who loves thee not, When angels wing from heaven on high And leave the sky for this dear spot.
"Another early school was that founded by St. Finnian at Cluain Eraird, better known under its corrupt form Clonard, a spot hard by the river Boyne, to which students from both north and south resorted in great numbers. Finnian, who was of the Clanna Rury, or Irian race, had been baptized by Bishop Fortchern, who—so quickly did the Christian cause progress—was a grandson of King Laeghaire, who withstood St. Patrick. This Fortchern, too, like Brigit's favourite bishop, was a skilled artificer in bronze and metal, a calling to which many of the early saints evinced a strong bias. Clonard even during Finnian's lifetime became a great school, and three thousand students are said to have been gathered round it, amongst them the so-called Twelve Apostles of Erin. These are Ciaran of Clonmacnois and Ciaran of Saigher, who is patron saint of Ossory; Brendan of Birr, the "prophet," and Brendan of Clonfert, the "navigator"; Columba of Tir-da-glass and Columcille; Mobhí of Glasnevin and—infaustum nomen!—Rodan of Lothra or Lorrha; Senanus of Iniscathy, whose name is known to the lovers of the poet Moore; Ninnidh of Loch Erne; Lasserian, and St. Cainnech of Kilkenny, known in Scotland as Kenneth, and second in that country only to St. Columcille and St. Brigit in popularity. The school of Clonard was founded about the year 520, when, to quote the rather jingling hymn from St. Finnian's office—
"Reversus in Clonardiam Ad cathedram lectur? Opponit diligentiam Ad studium scriptur?.
"The numbers who attended his teaching are given in another verse—
"Trium virorum millium Sorte fit doctor humilis, Verbi his fudit fluvium Ut fons emanans rivulis.
"Like all the other early Irish foundations which attained to wealth and dignity before the ninth century, Clonard suffered in proportion to its fame. It was after that date plundered and destroyed twelve times, and was fourteen times burnt down either wholly or in part. That being so, it is not much to be wondered at that there only remains a single surviving literary work of this school, which is the "Mystical Interpretation of the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ," by St. Aileran the Wise, one of Finnian's successors, who died of the great plague in 664. This piece, like so many others, was found in the Swiss monastery of St. Gall, whither it had been brought by some monks from Ireland. The editors who printed it for the Benedictines in the seventeenth century say that, although the writer did not belong to their Order, they publish it because he "unfolded the meaning of sacred scripture with so much learning and ingenuity that every student of the sacred volume, and especially preachers of the Divine Word, will regard the publication as most acceptable." The learned editors could have hardly paid the Irish writer a higher compliment. "A Short Moral Explanation of the Sacred Names" is another still existing fragment of Aileran's, and "whether we consider the style of the latinity, the learning, or the ingenuity of the writer," says Dr. Healy, "it is equally marvellous and equally honourable to the school of Clonard." Aileran is said to have also written lives of St. Patrick, St. Brigit, and St. Fechin of Fore, and to be the original author of a litany, part Irish, part Latin, preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan.
Another great Irish college was Clonfert on the Shannon, founded about the year 556 by Brendan the Navigator, who, like Finnian, came of the Irian race, being descended from Fergus mac Roy. He was born towards the close of the fifth century, and his school, too, became very famous, having, it is said, produced as many as three thousand monks. The influence of the Navigatio Brendani, by whomsoever written, was immense, and was felt through all Europe, so that in many of the great continental libraries good MS. copies of it, sometimes very ancient, may be found. But perhaps Brendan's grand-nephew and pupil may have indirectly influenced European literature in a still more important manner. This was Fursa, afterwards St. Fursa, whose visions were known all over Ireland, Great Britain, and France. There can be no doubt about the substantial accuracy of St. Fursa's life, for Bede himself, who dedicates a good deal of space to Fursa's visions, refers to it. It must have been written within ten or fifteen years after his death, because it refers to the plague and the great eclipse of the sun which happened last year, that is 664. Now Dante was acquainted with Bede's writings, for he expressly mentions him, and Bede's account of Fursa and Fursa's own life may have been familiar to him, and furnished him with the groundwork of part of the Divine Comedy of which it seems a kind of prototype.
Brendan's own adventures and his view of hell, which he was shown by the devil, may also have been known to Dante. Brendan prepared three vessels with thirty men in each, some clerics, some laymen, and with these, says his Irish life in the Book of Lismore, he sailed to seek the Promised Land, which, evidently influenced by the old pagan traditions of Moy Mell and Hy Brassil, he expected to find as an island in the Western Sea, and so says his Irish life poetically—
"Brendan, son of Finnlug, sailed over the wave-voice of the strong-maned sea, and over the storm of the green-sided waves, and over the mouths of the marvellous awful bitter ocean, where they saw the multitude of the furious red-mouthed monsters with abundance of the great sea-whales. And they found beautiful marvellous islands, yet they tarried not therein."
Like Sindbad in the Arabian tales, they land upon the back of a great whale as if it had been solid land. There they celebrated Easter. They endured much peril from the sea. "On a certain day, as they were on the marvellous ocean"—this adjective is strongly indicative of the spirit in which the Celt regards the works of nature—"they beheld the deep bitter streams and the vast black whirlpools of the strong-maned sea, and in them their vessels were being constrained to founder because of the greatness of the storm." Brendan, however, cried to the sea, "It is enough for thee, O mighty sea, to drown me alone, but let this folk escape thee," and on hearing his cry the sea grew calm. It was after this that Brendan got a view of hell.
"On a certain day," says the Irish Life, "that they were on the sea, the devil came in a form old, awful, hideous, foul, hellish, and sat on the rail of the vessel before Brendan, and none of them saw him save Brendan alone. Brendan asked him why he had come before his proper time, that is, before the time of the great resurrection. 'For this have I come,' said the devil, 'to seek my punishment in the deep closes of this black, dark sea.' Brendan inquired of him, 'What is this, where is that infernal place?' 'Sad is that,' said the devil; 'no one can see it and remain alive afterwards.' Howbeit the devil there revealed the gate of hell to Brendan, and Brendan beheld that rough, hot prison full of stench, full of flame, full of filth, full of the camps of the poisonous demons, full of wailing and screaming and hurt and sad cries and great lamentations and moaning and handsmiting of the sinful folks, and a gloomy, mournful life in hearts of pain, in igneous prisons, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in the cup of eternal sorrow and death, without limit, without end; in black, dark swamps, in fonts of heavy flame, in abundance of woe and death and torments, and fetters, and feeble wearying combats, with the awful shouting of the poisonous demons, in a night ever-dark, ever-cold, ever-stinking, ever-foul, ever-misty, ever-harsh, ever-long, ever-stifling, deadly, destructive, gloomy, fiery-haired, of the loathsome bottom of hell. On sides of mountains of eternal fire, without rest, without stay, were hosts of demons dragging the sinners into prisons ... black demons; stinking fires; streams of poison; cats scratching; hounds rending; dogs baying; demons yelling; stinking lakes; great swamps; dark pits; deep glens; high mountains; hard crags;... winds bitter, wintry; snow frozen, ever-dropping; flakes red, fiery; faces base, darkened; demons swift, greedy; tortures vast, various."
This is one of the earliest attempts in literature at the pourtrayal of an Inferno.
After a seven-years' voyage Brendan returned home to his own country without having found his Earthly Paradise, and his people and his folic at home "brought him," says the Irish Life, "treasures and gifts as if they were giving them to God"!
His foster-mother St. Ita now advised him not to put forth in search of that glorious land in those dead stained skins which formed his currachs, for it was a holy land he sought, and he should look for it in wooden vessels. Then Brendan built himself "a great marvellous vessel, distinguished and huge." He first sailed to Aran to consort with St. Enda, but after a month he heaved anchor and sailed once more into the West.
He reaches the Isle of Paradise after many adventures, and is invited on shore by an old man "without any human raiment, but all his body full of bright white feathers like a dove or a sea-mew, and it was almost the speech of an angel that he had." "O ye toilsome men," he said, "O hallowed pilgrims, O folk that entreat the heavenly rewards, O ever-weary life expecting this land, stay a little now from your labour." The land is described in terms that forcibly record the delights of the pagan Elysium of Moy Mell, and prove how intimately the Brendan legend is bound up with primitive pre-Christian mythological beliefs. "The delightful fields of the land" are described as "radiant, famous, lovable,"—"a land odorous, flower-smooth, blessed, a land many-melodied, musical, shouting-for-joy, unmournful." "Happy," said the old man, "shall he be with well-deservingness and with good deeds, whom Brandan, son of Finnlug, shall call into union with him on that side to inhabit for ever and ever the island whereon we stand."
But better known—at least in ecclesiastical history—than even St. Brendan, is St. Cummian, surnamed "fada" or the Long, who was one of his successors in the school of Clonfert, and who perished in or a little before the great plague of 664. There are two hymns, one by himself in Latin, and one in Irish by his tutor, Colman Ua Cluasaigh of Cork, preserved in the "Liber Hymnorum." But his great achievement was his celebrated letter on the Paschal question addressed to his friend Segienus, the abbot of Iona. The question of when to celebrate Easter day was one which long sundered the British and Irish Churches from the rest of Europe, and has, as students of ecclesiastical history know, given rise to all sorts of conjectures as to the independence of these churches. The charge against the Irish was that they celebrated Easter on any day from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the moon, even on the fourteenth if it should happen to be Sunday, but the fourteenth was a Jewish festival and the Council of Nice had, in 325, declared it to be unlawful to celebrate the Christian Easter on a Jewish festival. The Irish had obtained their own doctrine of Easter from the East, through Gaul, which was largely open to Eastern influence; also the Irish used the old Roman cycle of 84 years, not the newer and more correct Alexandrian one of 19 years. The consequence was the scandal of having different Churches of Christendom celebrating Easter on different days, and some mourning when others were feasting, a scandal which the Epistle of Cummian was designed to put an end to.
"I call this letter," says Professor G. Stokes, "a marvellous composition because of the vastness of its learning; it quotes besides the Scriptures and Latin authors, Greek writers like Origen, and Cyril, Pachomius the head and reformer of Egyptian monasticism, and Damascius the last of the celebrated neo-Platonic philosophers of Athens, who lived about the year 500, and wrote all his works in Greek. Cummian discusses the calendars of the Macedonians, Hebrews, and Copts, giving us the Hebrew, Greek, and Egyptian names of months and cycles, and tells us that he had been sent as one of a deputation of learned men a few years before to ascertain the practice of the Church of Rome. When they came to Rome they lodged in one hospital with a Greek and a Hebrew, an Egyptian, and a Scythian, who told them that the whole world celebrated the Roman and not the Irish Easter."
Cummian throughout this letter displays the true spirit of a scholar, he humbly apologises for his presumption in addressing such holy men, and calls God to witness that he is actuated by no spirit of pride or contempt for others. When the new cycle of 532 years was first introduced into Ireland he did not at once accept it, but held his peace and took no side in the matter, because he did not think himself wiser than the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, nor did he venture to disdain the food he had not yet tasted. So he retired for a whole year into the study of the question, to examine for himself the facts of history, the nature of the various cycles in use, and the testimony of Scripture.
There is another book, "De Mensura P?nitentiarum," ascribed to Cummian and printed in Migne; and there is a poem on his death by his tutor, St. Colman, who was carried off by the same plague a short time after him.
The great institution presided over by St. Cummian was flourishing in full vigour at the time of the first incursions of the Northmen. It is frequently mentioned in the Irish Annals as a place of note and learning. Turgesius the Dane, attracted by so fair a booty, promptly plundered and burnt it to the ground. Again and again it was rebuilt, and again and again the same fate befell it. The monastery and the school survived, however, until the coming of the Normans, and the "Four Masters" under the year 1170 record the death of one of its teachers, Cormac O'Lumlini, whom they pathetically designate "the remnant of the sages of Erin," for by this time Clonfert had been six times burnt and four times plundered.
Even a greater school, however, than Clonfert, was that founded by St. Ciaran , the carpenter's son, beside a curve in the Shannon, at Clonmacnois, not far from Athlone, about the year 544. He had himself been educated by St. Finnian of Clonard, and he died at the early age of thirty-three, immediately after laying the foundations of what was destined to become the greatest Christian college in Ireland.
The monastery and cells of St. Ciaran rapidly grew into a city, to which students flocked from far and near. In one sense the College of Clonmacnois had an advantage over all its rivals, for it belonged to no one race or clan. Its abbots and teachers were drawn from many different tribes, and situated as it was, in almost the centre of the island, all the great races, Erimonians, Eberians, Irians, and Ithians, resorted to it impartially, and it became a real university. There the O'Conors, kings of Connacht, had their own separate church; there the Southern Ui Neill reared apart their own cathedral; there the MacDermots, princes of Moylurg, and the O'Kellys, kings of Hy Mainy, had each their own mortuary chapels; there the Southerns built one round tower, the O'Rorkes another; and there too the Mac Carthys of Munster had a burial-place. Who, even at this day, has not heard of the glories of Clonmacnois, of its ruins, its graves, its crosses; of its churchyard, which possesses a greater variety of sculptured and decorated stones than perhaps all the rest of Ireland put together, and of which the Irish poet beautifully sang so long ago—
"In a quiet watered land, a land of roses, Stands St. Ciaran's city fair, And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations, Slumber there. There beneath the dewy hill-side sleep the noblest Of the clan of Conn, Each below his stone, with name in branching Ogham, And the sacred knot thereon. There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara, There the sons of Cairbré sleep, Battle-banners of the Gael that in Ciaran's Plain of Crosses, Now their final hosting keep. And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia, And right many a lord of Breagh. Deep the sod above Clan Creidé and Clan Conaill, Kind in hall and fierce in fray. Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter In the red earth lies at rest, Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers, Many a swan-white breast.
"Some of the most distinguished scholars of Ireland, if not of Europe, were educated at Clonmacnois, including Alcuin, the most learned man at the French court, who remembered his alma mater so affectionately that he extracted from King Charles of France a gift of fifty shekels of silver, to which he added fifty more of his own, and sent them to the brotherhood of Clonmacnois as a gift, with a quantity of olive oil for the Irish bishops. His affectionate letter to "his blessed master and pious father" Colgan, chief professor at Clonmacnois, is still extant.
This Colgu, or Colgan, himself wrote a book in Irish, called "The Besom of Devotion," which appears to be now lost. A litany of his still remains. The great eleventh-century annalist, Tighearnach, was an alumnus of Clonmacnois. So, too, was the reputed author of the "Chronicon Scotorum," O'Malone, in 1123. The Annals of Clonmacnois was one of the books in the hands of the "Four Masters," but it is now lost, and a different book called by the same name (the original of which has also perished) was translated into English by Macgeoghegan in 1627. The celebrated Leabhar na h-Uidhre or "Book of the Dun Cow," compiled about the year 1100, emanated from this centre of learning. Like Clonfert, and every other home of Irish civilisation, the city of Clonmacnois fell a prey to the barbarians. The Northmen plundered it or burnt it, or both, on ten separate occasions. Turgesius, their leader, set up his wife Ota as a kind of priestess to deliver oracles from its high altar; and some of the Irish themselves, reduced to a state of barbarism by the horrors of the period, laid their sacrilegious hands upon its holy places; and afterwards the English of Athlone stepped in and completed its destruction. It now remains only a ruin and a name.
Another very celebrated school was that of Bangor, on Belfast Loch, founded by Comgall, the friend of Columcille, between 550 and 560. It soon became crowded with scholars, and next to Armagh it was certainly the greatest school of the northern province, and produced men of the highest eminence at home and abroad. Its fame reached far across the sea. St. Bernard called it "a noble institution, which was inhabited by many thousands of monks;" and Joceline of Furness, in the twelfth century, called it "a fruitful vine breathing the odour of salvation, whose offshoots extended not only over all Ireland, but far beyond the seas into foreign countries, and filled many lands with its abounding fruitfulness."
The most distinguished of Bangor's sons of learning were Columbanus, the evangeliser of portions of Burgundy and Lombardy; St. Gall, the evangeliser of Switzerland; Dungal, the astronomer; and later on, in the twelfth century, Malachy O'Morgair, who, though not known as an author, distinguished himself in the province of Church discipline.
The lives of St. Columbanus and of St. Gall belong rather to foreign than to Irish history, but we may glance at them again in another place. Dungal, poet, astronomer, and theologian, was also like them, for a time, an exile. His identity is uncertain; the "Four Masters" mention twenty-two persons of the same name between the years 744 and 1015, but his Irish nationality is certain, and he calls himself "Hibernicus exul" in his poem addressed to his patron Charlemagne. He appears to have died in the Irish monastery at Bobbio, in North Italy, to which he left his library, and amongst other books the celebrated Antiphonary of Bangor, his possession of which seems to warrant us in supposing that Bangor was his original college. He appears to have been a close friend of Charlemagne's, and in 811 he wrote him his celebrated letter, explanatory of the two solar eclipses which had taken place the year before. The emperor could apparently find at his court no other astronomer of sufficient learning to explain the phenomena. Later on we find Dungal, at the request of Lothaire, Charlemagne's grandson, opening a school at Pavia to civilise the Lombards, to which institution great numbers of students flocked from every quarter. Dungal may, in fact, be regarded as the founder of the University of Pavia. His greatest effort whilst in Pavia was his work against the Iconoclasts. Dungal's attack upon the cultured Spanish bishop, Claudius, who championed them, as it was the first, so it appears to have been the ablest blow struck; and Western iconoclasm seemed to have for the time received a mortal wound from his hand. Besides his long eulogy on his friend and patron Charlemagne, several other smaller poems of his survive, showing him to have been—like almost all Irishmen of that date—no mere pedant and student.
Like almost all the more famous and attractive of the Irish colleges, Bangor suffered fearfully from the attacks of the northern pirates, who, according to St. Bernard, slew there as many as nine hundred monks. "Not a cross, not even a stone," says Dr. Healy, "now remains to mark the site of the famous monastery, whose crowded cloisters for a thousand years overlooked the pleasant islets and broad waters of Inver Becne." It has shared the fate of its compeers:
etiam periere ruin?.
It would prove too tedious to enumerate the other Irish colleges which dotted the island in the sixth and seventh centuries. The most remarkable of them besides those that I have mentioned were Moville, at the head of Loch Cuan or Strangford Lough, in the County Down, founded by St. Finnian, who was born before 500, and who afterwards became known as Frigidius, Bishop of Lucca, in Switzerland. Colman, whose hymn is preserved in the "Liber Hymnorum," and Marianus Scotus, the Chronicler, were alumni of Moville.
Cluain Eidnech, or Clonenagh, the "Ivy Meadow," was founded by St. Fintan, near Maryborough, in the present Queen's County. Angus the Culdee, who with its Abbot Maelruain is said to have composed the Martyrology of Tallaght prior to 792, was its greatest ornament. Of his Irish works we shall have more to say later on. Clonenagh suffered so much from the Northmen, that its great foundation had already in the twelfth century dwindled to a parochial church; in the nineteenth it is a green mound.
Glendalough, founded by the celebrated St. Kevin, became also a college of much note. St. Moling, to whom a great number of Irish poems are ascribed, was one of his successors in the seventh century, and his life seems to have taken peculiar hold upon the imagination of the populace, for he has more poems—many of them evident forgeries—attributed to him than we find ascribed to any of the saints except to Columcille; and he has a place amongst the four great prophets of Erin. It was he who procured the remission of the Boru tribute from King Finnachta about the year 693. Glendalough was plundered and destroyed by the Danes five times over, within a period of thirty years, yet it to some extent recovered itself, and the great St. Laurence O'Toole, who was Archbishop of Dublin at the coming of the Normans, had been there educated.
Lismore, the great college of the south-east, was founded by St. Carthach in the beginning of the seventh century, who left behind him, according to O'Curry, a monastic rule of 580 lines of Irish verse. Cathal, or Cathaldus, born in the beginning of the seventh century, who afterwards became bishop and patron saint of Tarentum, in Italy, was a student, and perhaps professor in this college. The office of St. Cathaldus states that Gauls, Angles, Irish, and Teutons, and very many people of neighbouring nations came to hear his lectures at Lismore, and Morini's life of him expresses in poetic terms the tradition of Lismore's greatness. St. Cuanna, another member of Lismore, was probably the author of the Book of Cuanach, now lost, but often quoted in the Annals of Ulster. He died in 650, and the book is not quoted after the year 628, which makes it more than probable that he was the author. Lismore was burnt down by the Danes, but recovered itself in the general revival of native institutions that took place prior to the conquest of the Anglo-Normans. However, when these latter came upon the Irish stage it fared ill with Lismore. Strongbow, indeed, was bought off from burning its churches in 1173 by a great sum of money, but in the following year his son, in spite of this, plundered the place. Four years later the English forces again attacked it, plundered it, and set it on fire. In 1207 the whole town and all about it was finally consumed, so that at the present day not a vestige remains behind of its schools, its cloisters, or its twenty churches.
Cork college was founded by St. Finnbarr towards the end of the sixth century. One of its professors, Colman O'Cluasaigh, who died in 664, wrote the curious Irish hymn or prayer mixed with Latin, preserved in the Book of Hymns. The place was burned four times between 822 and 840, but in the twelfth century the ancient monastery which had fallen into decay was rebuilt by Cormac Mac Carthy, king of Munster, and builder of the celebrated Cormac's Chapel at Cashel.
The school of Ross was founded by St. Fachtna for the Ithian tribes of Corca Laidhi in South-west Munster. Ross is frequently referred to in the Annals up to the tenth century. There is extant an interesting geographical poem in Irish, of 136 lines, written by one of the teachers there in the tenth century, and apparently intended as a kind of simple text to be learned by heart by the students. Ross was plundered by the Danes in 840, but appears to have been flourishing until North-west Munster was laid waste by the Anglo-Normans under FitzStephen, after which no more is heard of its schools or colleges.
Innisfallen was founded upon an exquisite site on the lower lake of Killarney by St. Finan. The well-known "Annals of Innisfallen," preserved in the Bodleian Library, were probably written by Maelsuthain O'Carroll, the "soul-friend" of Brian Boru, who inserted the famous entry in the Book of Armagh. It is probable that Brian himself was also educated there. This monastery, owing to its secure retreat in the Kerry mountains, appears to have remained unplundered by the Norsemen, and to have been accounted "a paradise and a secure sanctuary."
Iniscaltra is a beautiful island in the south-west angle of Loch Derg, between Galway and Clare, still famous for its splendid round tower. It was here Columba of Terryglass, who died in 552, established a school and monastery which became so famous that in the life of St. Senan seven ships are mentioned as arriving at the mouth of the Shannon crowded with students for Iniscaltra. It was this Columba who, when asked by one of his disciples why the birds that frequented the island were not afraid of him, made the somewhat dramatic answer, "Why should they fear me? am I not a bird myself, for my soul always flies to heaven as they fly through the sky." Columba had a celebrated successor called Caimin, who died in 653. Ussher, who calls him St. Caminus, tells us that part of his Psalter was extant in his own time, and that he had himself seen it "having a collation of the Hebrew text placed on the upper part of each page, and with brief scholia added on the exterior margin."
A great number of lesser monastic institutions and schools seem to have existed alongside of these more famous ones, and it is hardly too much to say that during the sixth, seventh, eighth, and perhaps ninth centuries Ireland had caught and held aloft the torch of learning in the lampadia of mankind, and procured for herself the honourable title of the island of saints and scholars.
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It is a common tradition that Columcille would not allow a cow on Iona, because, said he, "where there is a cow there will be a woman"! This tradition is entirely contradicted, however, by Adamnan's life.
Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 169.
There is a story of Columcille when in Aran discovering the grave of an "abbot of Jerusalem" who had come to see Enda, and died there, printed by Kuno Meyer from Rawlinson B. 512 in the "Gaelic Journal," vol. iv. p. 162.
Literally: "Farewell from me to Ara, it is it anguishes my heart not to be in the west among her waves, amid groups of the saints of heaven. It is far, alas! it is far, alas! I have been sent from Ara West, out towards the population of Mona to visit the Albanachs. Ara sun, oh Ara sun, my affection lies buried in her in the west, it is the same to be beneath her pure soil as to be beneath the soil of Paul and Peter. Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her, may he be given for it shortness of life and hell. Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her, may their cattle decay and their children, and be he himself on the other side (of this life) in evil plight. O Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her," etc.
See ch. VII, note 1.
It has been edited both by a Frenchman, M. Jubinal, and a German, Karl Schroeder, from eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth century MSS. preserved in Paris, Leipsic, and Wolfenbuttel, and by Cardinal Moran from, I believe, a ninth-century one in the Vatican. Giraldus Cambrensis alludes to it as well known in his time, "H?c autem si quis audire gestierit qui de vita Brendani scriptus est libellum legat" ("Top. Hib.," II. ch. 43). There is a copy of Brendan's acts in the so-called Book of Kilkenny in Marsh's Library, Dublin, a MS. of probably the fourteenth century.
"Eccles. Hist.," lib. iii. c. 19. He calls him "Furseus, verbo et actibus clarus sedet egregiis insignis virtutibus," and dedicates five pages of Mayer and Lumby's edition to an account of him and his visions.
Father O'Hanlon, in his great work on the Irish saints, has pointed out a large number of close parallels between Fursa's vision and Dante's poem which seem altogether too striking to be fortuitous. (See vol. i. pp. 115-120.) There are a poem and a litany attributed to St. Fursa in the MS. H. 1. 11. in Trinity College, Dublin. The visions of Purgatory seen by Dryhthelm, a monk of Melrose, as recorded by Bede, which are later than St. Fursa's vision, are conceived very much in the same style, only are much more doctrinal in their purgatorial teaching. "Tracing the course of thought upwards," says Sir Francis Palgrave ("History of Normandy and England"), "we have no difficulty in deducing the poetic genealogy of Dante's 'Inferno' to the Milesian Furs?us."
See above, p. 97.
The same story, as Whitley Stokes points out, is told in two ninth-century lives of St. Machut, so that a tenth-century version of Sindbad's first voyage cannot have been the origin of it.
This is evidently the passage upon which Keating's description of hell in the "Three Shafts of Death," Leabh. III. allt. ix., x., xi., is modelled. He quite outdoes his predecessor in declamation and exuberance of alliterative adjectives. Compare also the description in the vision of Adamnan of the infernal regions as it is elaborated in the copy in the Leabhar Breac, in contradistinction to the more sober colouring of the older Leabhar na h-Uidhre.
Beginning:—
"Celebra Juda festa Christi gaudia Apostulorum exultans memoria. Claviculari Petri primi pastoris Piscium rete evangelii corporis Alleluia.
"This hymn, says Dr. Todd, "bears evident marks of the high antiquity claimed for it, and there seem no reasonable grounds for doubting its authenticity."
"The correct system lays down three principles. First, Easter day must be always a Sunday, never on but next after the fourteenth day of the moon; secondly, that fourteenth day of the full moon should be that on or next after the vernal equinox; and thirdly, the equinox itself was invariably assigned to the 21st of March" (Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 234). At Rome the 18th had been regarded as the equinox; St. Patrick, however, rightly laid it down that the equinox took place on the 21st.
Late professor of Ecclesiastical History in Dublin University. See "Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," May, 1892, p. 195.
The first verse runs thus:—
"Ni beir Luimneach for a druim Di sil Muimhneach i Leth Cuinn Marbán in noi bu fiú do Do Cuimmine mac Fiachno—
"The lower Shannon bears not upon its surface, of Munster race in Leath Cuinn, any corpse in boat, equal to him, to Cuimin, son of Fiachna. His corpse was apparently brought home by water.
There is a verse ascribed to Ciaran in the "Chronicon Scotorum," beginning "Darerca mo mháthair-si," and a poem ascribed to him in H. 1. 11. Trinity College, Dublin.
Thus admirably translated by my friend Mr. Rolleston in "Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland," Dublin, 1888, a little volume which seems to have been the precursor of a considerable literary movement in Ireland. Literally: "The city of Ciaran of Clonmacnois, a dewy-bright red-rose town, of its royal seed, of lasting fame, the hosts in the pure-streamed peaceful town. The nobles of the clan of Conn are in the flag-laid brown-sloped churchyard, a knot or a branch above each body and a fair correct name in Ogam. The sons of Cairbré over the seven territories, the seven great princes from Tara, many a sheltering standard on a field of battle is with the people of Ciaran's Plain of Crosses. The men of Teffia, the tribes of Breagh were buried beneath the clay of Cluain. The valiant and hospitable are yonder beneath the sod, the race of Creidé and the Clan Conaill. Numerous are the sons of Conn of the Battles, with red clay and turf covering them, many a blue eye and white limb under the earth of Clan Colman's tomb." The first verses run in modern spelling thus:
"Cáthair Chiaráin Chluain-mic-Nóis Baile drucht-solas, dearg-rois. Da shíl rioghraidh is buan bládh Sluaigh fá'n sith-bhaile sruth-ghlan. Atáid uaisle cloinne Chuinn Fa'n reilig leacaigh learg-dhuinn Snaoidhm no Craobh os gach cholain Agus ainm caomh ceart Oghaim.
"The clan of Conn here mentioned are principally the Ui Neill and their correlatives. Teffia is something equivalent to Longford, and Breagh to Meath. Clan Creidé are the O'Conors of Connacht, and the Clan Colman principally means the O'Melaughlins and their kin. "Colman mor, a quo Clann Cholmáin ie Maoileachlain cona fflaithibh" (Mac Firbis MS. Book of Genealogies, p. 161 of O'Curry's transcript). Colman was the brother of King Diarmuid, who was slain in 552.
Published a couple of years ago by the late Father Murphy, S.J., for the Royal Antiquarian Society of Ireland.
"Airgid cealla ardnaomh Ereann uile ocus as ar altoir Cluana mac Nois do bhereadh Otta bean Tuirghes uirigheall do gach ae" (Mac Firbis MS. of Genealogies, p. 768 in O'Curry's transcript). Also "Gael and Gall," p. 13.
Claudius was Bishop of Turin, and a man of much culture and ability; so disgusted was he with the congregation of ignorant Italian bishops—culture was then at the lowest ebb in Italy—before whom he argued his case that he called them a congregatio asinorum, and says Zimmer, "Ein Ire, Dungal, musste für sie die Vertheidigung des Bilderdienstes übernehmen."
Pronounced "Keevin," not "K?vin." The Irish form is Caoimh- ghinn, the "g" being aspirated is scarcely pronounced.
The celebrated Evangelistarium, or Book of Moling, was, with its case or cover, deposited in Trinity College, Dublin, in the last century by the Kavanaghs of Borris. Giraldus Cambrensis classes Moling as a prophet with Merlin, and as a saint with Patrick and Columba. One of the prophecies assigned to him is given by O'Curry, MS. Mat., p. 427. The oldest copy of any of Moling's poems is in the monastery of St. Paul in Carinthia, contained in a MS. originally brought from Augia Dives, or Reichenau. It is in the most perfect metre, and runs:—
"Is en immo niada sás Is nau tholl diant eslinn guas, Is lestar fás, is crann crín Nach digni toil ind rig tuas.
"("He is a bird round which a trap closes,
He is a leaky bark in weakness of peril,
He is an empty vessel, he is a withered tree
Who doth not do the will of the King above.")
I.e., "Is eán um a n-iadhann sás / is nau (long) thollta darb' éislinn guais. Is leastar fas (folamh) is crann crion, nach ndeanann toil an righ shuas."
The poem is also given in the Book of Leinster, and contains eight verses. One would perhaps have expected the third line to run, "is crann crín is lestar fás." The St. Paul MS., which is of the eighth century, contains two of Molling's poems, and they scarcely differ in wording or orthography from copies in MSS. six hundred years later.
Patrick, Columcille, and Berchan of Clonsast, are the others. Even the English settlers had heard of their fame. Baron Finglas, writing in Henry VIII.'s reign, says, "The four saints, St. Patrick, St. Columb, St. Braghane , and St. Moling, which many hundred years agone made prophecy that Englishmen should have conquered Ireland, and said that the said Englishmen should keep their owne laws, and as soon as they should leave, and fall to Irish order, then they should decay, the experience whereof is proved true." (From Ryan's "History and Antiquities of the co. Carlow," p. 93.) A still more curious allusion to the four Irish prophets is one in the Book of Howth, a small vellum folio of the sixteenth century, written in thirteen different hands, published in the Calendar of State Papers. "Men say," recounts the anonymous writer, "that the Irishmen had four prophets in their time, Patrick, Marten , Brahen , and Collumkill. Whosoever hath books in Irish written every of them speak of the fight of this conquest, and saith that long strife and oft fighting shall be for this land, and the land shall be harried and stained with great slaughter of men, but the Englishmen fully shall have the mastery a little before doomsday, and that land shall be from sea to sea i-castled and fully won, but the Englishmen shall be after that well feeble in the land and disdained; so Barcan saith: that through a king shall come out of the wild mountains of St. Patrick's, that much people shall slew and afterwards break a castle in the wooden of Affayle, with that the Englishmen of Ireland shall be destroyed by that." The prophecy that the Englishmen fully shall have the mastery a little before Doomsday is amusingly equivocal!
Described in O'Curry's MS. Materials, p. 375, but I do not know where the original is.
Quoted in O'Halloran's "History of Ireland," bk. ix. chap. 4. "Celeres vastissima Rheni / jam vada Teutonici, jam deseruere Sicambri; / Mittit ab extremo gelidos Aquilone Boemos / Albis et Arvenni c?eunt, Batavi-que frequentes, / Et quicunque colunt alta sub rupe Gehennas. / ... Certatim hi properunt diverso tramite ad urbem / Lesmoriam juvenis primos ubi transigit annos." See also corroborative proof of the numbers of Gauls, Teutons, Swiss, and Italians visiting Lismore about the year 700 in Ussher's "Antiquities," Works, vi., p. 303.
Reprinted by Windisch in his "Irische Texte," Heft 1., p. 5. The first verse runs—
"Sén De don fe for don te Mac maire ron feladar! For a fhoessam dún anocht Cia tiasam, cain temadar,
"which is in no wise easy to translate! There are fifty-six verses not all in the same metre. Another acknowledges St. Patrick as a patron saint, it would run thus, in modernised orthography—
"Beannacht ar erlám Pádraig Go naomhaib Eireann uime Beannacht ar an gcáthair-se Agus ar chách bhfuil innti!
"A three-quarter Latin verse runs thus—
"Regem regum rogamus / in nostris sermonibus Anacht Noe a luchtlach / diluvi temporibus.
"See p. 67.
See "Proceedings of R. I. Academy for 1884."
Whose name is preserved in O'Connell's residence, "Derrynane," which is really "Derry-finan" (Doire-Fhionáin).
See p. 140 and Ch. XIII note 12.
"Habebatur psalterium, cujus unicum tantum quaternionem mihi videre contigit, obelis et asteriscis diligentissime distinctum; collatione cum veritate Hebraica in superiore parte cujusque pagin? posita, et brevibus scholiis ad exteriorem marginem adjectis." (See "Works," vol. vi. p. 544. Quoted by Professor G. Stokes, "Proceedings R. I. Academy," May, 1892.)
It is very difficult to say what was exactly the curriculum of the early Irish colleges, and how far they were patronised by laymen. Without doubt their original design was to propagate a more perfect knowledge of the Scriptures and of theological learning in general, but it is equally certain that they must have, almost from the very first, taught the heathen classics and the Irish language side by side with the Scriptures and theology. There is no other possible way of accounting for the admirable scholarship of the men whom they turned out, and for their skill in Latin and often also in Irish poetry. Virgil, Ovid, Terence, and most of the Latin poets must have been widely taught and read. "It is sufficient," says M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, talking of Columbanus who was born in 543, and who was educated at Bangor, on Belfast Loch, "to glance at his writings, immediately to recognise his marvellous superiority over Gregory of Tours and the Gallo-Romans of his time. He lived in close converse with the classical authors, as later on did the learned men of the sixteenth century, whose equal he certainly is not, but of whom he seems a sort of precursor." From the sixth to the sixteenth century is a long leap, and no higher eulogium could be passed upon the scholarship of Columbanus and the training given by his Irish college. All the studies of the time appear to have been taught in them through the medium of the Irish language, not merely theology but arithmetic, rhetoric, poetry, hagiography, natural science as then understood, grammar, chronology, astronomy, Greek, and even Hebrew.
"The classic tradition," sums up M. Darmesteter, "to all appearances dead in Europe, burst out into full flower in the Isle of Saints, and the Renaissance began in Ireland 700 years before it was known in Italy. During three centuries Ireland was the asylum of the higher learning which took sanctuary there from the uncultured states of Europe. At one time Armagh, the religious capital of Christian Ireland, was the metropolis of civilisation."
"Ireland," says Babington in his "Fallacies of Race Theories," "had been admitted into Christendom and to some measure of culture only in the fifth century. At that time Gaul and Italy enjoyed to the full all the knowledge of the age. In the next century the old culture-lands had to turn for some little light and teaching to that remote and lately barbarous land."
When we remember that the darkness of the Middle Ages had already set in over the struggles, agony, and confusion of feudal Europe, and that all knowledge of Greek may be said to have died out upon the Continent—"had elsewhere absolutely vanished," says M. Darmesteter—when we remember that even such a man as Gregory the Great was completely ignorant of it, it will appear extraordinary to find it taught in Ireland alone, out of all the countries of Western Europe. Yet this is capable of complete and manifold proof. Columbanus for instance, shows in his letter to Pope Boniface that he knows something of both Greek and Hebrew. Aileran, who died of the plague in 664, gives evidence of the same in his book on our Lord's genealogy. Cummian's letter to the Abbot of Iona has been referred to before, and, as Professor G. Stokes puts it, "proves the fact to demonstration that in the first half of the seventh century there was a wide range of Greek learning, not ecclesiastical merely, but chronological, astronomical, and philosophical, away at Durrow in the very centre of the Bog of Allen." Augustine, an un-identified Irish monk of the second half of the seventh century, gives many proofs of Greek and Oriental learning and quotes the Chronicles of Eusebius. The later Sedulius, the versatile abbot of Kildare, about the year 820 "makes parade of his Greek knowledge," to quote a French writer in the "Revue Celtique," "employs Greek words without necessity, and translates into Greek a part of the definition of the pronoun." St. Caimins's Psalter, seen by Bishop Ussher with the Hebrew text collated, convinced Dr. Reeves that Hebrew as well as Greek was studied in Ireland about the year 600. Nor did this Greek learning tend to die out. In the middle of the ninth century John Scotus Erigena, summoned from Ireland to France by Charles the Bald, was the only person to be found able to translate the Greek works of the pseudo-Dionysius, thanks to the training he had received in his Irish school. The Book of Armagh contains the Lord's Prayer written in Greek letters, and there is a Greek MS. of the Psalter, written in Sedulius' own hand, now preserved in Paris. Many more Greek texts, at least a dozen, written by Irish monks, are preserved elsewhere in Europe. "These eighth and ninth century Greek MSS.," remarks Professor Stokes, "covered with Irish glosses and Irish poems and Irish notes, have engaged the attention of pal?ographers and students of the Greek texts of the New Testament during the last two centuries." They are indeed a proof that—as Dr. Reeves puts it—the Irish School "was unquestionably the most advanced of its day in sacred literature."
This remarkable knowledge of Greek was evidently derived from an early and direct commerce with Gaul, where Greek had been spoken for four or five centuries, first alongside of Celtic, and in later times of Latin also. The knowledge of Hebrew may have been derived from the Egyptian monks who passed over from Gaul into Ireland. Egypt and the East were more or less in close communication with Gaul in the fifth century, and the Irish Litany, ascribed to Angus the Culdee, commemorates seven Egyptian monks amongst many other Gauls, Germans, and Italians who resided in Ireland. The close and constant intercommunication between Greek-speaking Gaul and Ireland accounts for the planting and cultivation of the Greek language in the Irish schools, and once planted there it continued to flourish more or less for some centuries. There is ample evidence to prove the connection between Gaul and Ireland from the fifth to the ninth century. We find Gaulish merchants in the middle of Ireland at Clonmacnois, who had no doubt sailed up the Shannon in the way of commerce, selling wine to Ciaran in the sixth century. We find Columbanus, a little later on, inquiring at Nantes for a vessel engaged in the Irish trade—qu? vexerat commercium cum Hibernia. In Adamnan's Life of Columcille we find mention of Gaulish sailors arriving at Cantire. Adamnan's own treatise on Holy Places was written from the verbal account of a Gaul. In the Old Irish poem on the Fair of Carman in Wexford—a pagan institution which lived on in Christian times—we find mention of the
"Great market of the foreign Greeks, Where gold and noble clothes were wont to be;
"the foreign Greeks being no doubt the Greek-speaking Gaulish merchants. Alcuin sends his gifts of money and oil and his letters direct from Charlemagne's court to his friends in Clonmacnois, probably by a vessel engaged in the direct Irish trade, for, as he himself tells us, the sea-route between England and France was then closed. If more proof of the close communication between Ireland and Gaul were wanted, the fact that Dagobert II., king of France in the seventh century, was educated at Slane, in Ireland, and also that certain Merovingian and French coins have been found here, should be sufficient.
The fame of these early Irish schools attracted students in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries from all quarters to Ireland, which had now become a veritable land of schools and scholars. The Venerable Bede tells us of the crowds of Anglo-Saxons who flocked over into Ireland during the plague, about the year 664, and says that they were all warmly welcomed by the Irish, who took care that they should be provided with food every day, without payment on their part; that they should have books to read, and that they should receive gratuitous instruction from Irish masters. Books must have already multiplied considerably when the swarms of Anglo-Saxons could thus be supplied with them gratis. This noble tradition of free education to strangers lasted down to the establishment of the so-called "National" schools in Ireland, for down to that time "poor scholars" were freely supported by the people and helped in their studies. The number of scribes whose deaths have been considered worth recording by the annalists is very great, and books consequently must have been very numerous. This plentifulness of books probably added to the renown of the Irish schools. An English prince as well as a French one was educated by them in the seventh century; this was Aldfrid, king of Northumbria, who was trained in all the learning of Erin, and who always aided and abetted the Irish in England, in opposition to Wilfrid, who opposed them. That the king got a good education in Ireland may be conjectured from the fact that Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, dedicated to him a poetic epistle on Latin metric and prosody, in which, says Dr. Healy, "he congratulates the king on his good fortune in having been educated in Ireland." Aldhelm's own master was also an Irishman, Mael-dubh, and his abbacy of Malmesbury is only a corruption of this Irishman's name Maeldubh's-bury. In another place Aldhelm tells us that while the great English school at Canterbury was by no means overcrowded, the English swarmed to the Irish schools like bees. Aldfrid himself, when leaving Ireland, composed a poem of sixty lines in the Irish language and metre, which he must have learned from the bards, in which he compliments each of the provinces severally, as though he meant to thank the whole nation for their hospitality.
"I found in Inisfail the fair In Ireland, while in exile there, Women of worth, both grave and gay men, Learned clerics, heroic laymen. I travelled its fruitful provinces round, And in every one of the five I found, Alike in church and in palace hall, Abundant apparel and food for all.
"St. Willibrord, a Saxon noble educated in Ireland about the same time with King Aldfrid, went out thence and ultimately became Archbishop of Utrecht. Another noted scholar of the same period was Agilbert, a Frank by birth, who spent a long time in Ireland for the purpose of study and afterwards became Bishop of Paris. We have seen how the Office of St. Cathaldus states that the school of Lismore was visited by Gauls, Angles, Scotti, Teutons, and scholars from other neighbouring nations. The same was more or less the case with Clonmacnois, Bangor, and some others of the most noted of the Irish schools.
It was not in Greek attainments, nor in ecclesiastical studies, nor in Latin verses alone, that the Irish excelled; they also produced astronomers like Dungal and geographers like Dicuil. Dungal's attainments we have glanced at, but Dicuil's book—de mensura orbis terrarum—written about the year 825, is more interesting, although nothing is known about the author's own life, nor do we know even the particular Irish school to which he belonged. His book was published by a Frenchman because he found Dicuil's descriptions of the measurements of the Pyramids a thousand years ago tallied with his own.
"Antioch," writes Professor G. Stokes, "about A.D. 600, was the centre of Greek culture and Greek erudition, and the chronicle of Malalas, as embodied in Niebuhr's series of Byzantine historians, is a mine of information on many questions; but compare it with the Irish work of Dicuil and its mistakes are laughable."
A great deal of his work is founded of course upon Pliny, Solinus, and Priscian, but he shows a highly-developed critical sense in comparing and collating various MSS. which he had inspected to ensure accuracy. What he tells us at first-hand, however, is by far the most interesting. In speaking of the Nile he says that:—
"Although we never read in any book that any branch of the Nile flows into the Red Sea, yet Brother Fidelis told in my presence to my master Suibhne —to whom under God I owe whatever knowledge I possess—that certain clerics and laymen from Ireland who went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage sailed up the Nile a long way."
They sailed thence by a canal into the Red Sea, and this statement proves the accuracy of Dicuil, for this canal really existed and continued in use until 767, when it was closed to hinder the people of Mecca and Medina getting supplies from Egypt. The account of the Pyramids is particularly interesting. "The aforesaid Brother Fidelis measured one of them and found that the square face was 400 feet in length." The same brother wished to examine the exact point where Moses had entered the Red Sea in order to try if he could find any traces of the chariots of Pharaoh or the wheel tracks, but the sailors were in a hurry and would not allow him to go on this excursion. The breadth of the sea appeared to him at this point to be about six miles. Dicuil describes Iceland long before it was discovered by the Danes.
"It is now thirty years," said he, writing in 825, "since I was told by some Irish ecclesiastics, who had dwelt in that island from the 1st of February to the 1st of August, that the sun scarcely sets there in summer, but always leaves, even at midnight, light enough to do one's ordinary business—vel pediculos de camisia abstrahere"!
Those writers are greatly mistaken, he says, who describe the Icelandic sea as always frozen, and who say that there is day there from spring to autumn and from autumn to spring, for the Irish monks sailed thither through the open sea in a month of great natural cold, and yet found alternate day and night, except about the period of the summer solstice. He also describes the Faroe Isles:—
"A certain trustworthy monk told me that he reached one of them by sailing for two summer days and one night in a vessel with two benches of rowers.... In these islands for almost a hundred years there dwelt hermits who sailed there from our own Ireland , but now they are once more deserted as they were at the beginning, on account of the ravages of the Norman pirates."
This is proof positive that the Irish discovered and inhabited Iceland and the Faroe Islands half a century or a century before the Northmen. Dicuil was distinguished as a grammarian, metrician, and astronomer, but his geographical treatise, written in his old age, is the most interesting and valuable of his achievements.
Fergil, or Virgilius, as he is usually called, was another great Irish geometer, who eventually became Archbishop of Salzburg and died in 785. He taught the sphericity of the earth and the doctrine of the Antipodes, a truth which seems also to have been familiar to Dicuil. St. Boniface, afterwards Archbishop of Mentz, evidently distorting his doctrine, accused him to the Pope of heresy in teaching that there was another world and other men under the earth, and another sun and moon. "Concerning this charge of false doctrine, if it shall be established," said the Pope, "that Virgil taught this perverse and wicked doctrine against God and his own soul, do you then convoke a council, degrade him from the priesthood, and drive him from the Church." Virgil, however, seems to have satisfactorily explained his position, for nothing was done against him.
These instances help to throw some light upon a most difficult subject—the training given in the early Irish Christian schools, and the cause of their undoubted popularity for three centuries and more amongst the scholars of Western Europe.
********
Here are a few lines from the well-known Adonic poem which he, at the age of 68, addressed to his friend Fedolius—
"Extitit ingens Impia quippe Causa malorum Pygmalionis Aurea pellis, Regis ob aurum Corruit auri Gesta leguntur. Munere parvo * * * * * C?na Deorum. Ac tribus illis F?mina s?pe Maxima lis est Perdit ob aurum Orta Deabus. Casta pudorem. Hinc populavit Non Jovis auri Trogugenarum Fluxit in imbre Ditia regna Sed quod adulter Dorica pubes. Obtulit aurum Juraque legum Aureus ille Fasque fides que Fingitur imber.
"Rumpitur aure.
Dr. Sigerson in "Bards of the Gael and Gaul," p. 407, prints as Jubainville also does, the whole of this noted poem, and points out that it is shot through and through with Irish assonance. "Not less important than its assonance," writes Dr. Sigerson, "is the fact that it introduces into Latin verse the use of returning words, or burthens with variations, which supply the vital germs of the rondeau and the ballad." I am not myself convinced of what Dr. Sigerson considers marks of intentional assonance in almost every line.
His chief remaining works are a Monastic Rule in ten chapters; a book on the daily penances of the monks; seventeen sermons; a book on the measure of penances; a treatise on the eight principal vices; five epistles written to Gregory the Great and others; and a good many Latin verses. His life is written by the Abbot Jonas, a contemporary of his own.
P. 122.
"Gr?ssere oder geringere Kenntniss klassischen Alterthums, vor allem Kenntniss des Griechischen ist daher in jener Zeit ein Mazstab sowohl für die Bildung einer einzelnen Pers?nlichkeit als auch fur den Culturgrad eines ganzen Zeitalters" (Zimmer, "Preussische Jahrb?cher," January, 1887).
He plays on his own name Columba, "a dove," and turns it into Greek and Hebrew, περιστερ? and ????.
Dr. Sigerson prints an admirably graceful poem either by this or another Sedulius of the ninth century at p. 411 of his "Bards of the Gael and Gaul." It shows how far from being pedants the Irish monks were. This poem is a dispute between the rose and lily.
This translation which Charles sent to the Pope threw Anastasius, the Librarian of the Roman Church, into the deepest astonishment. "Mirandum est," he writes in his letter of reply, dated 865, "quomodo vir ille barbarus in finibus mundi positus, talia intellectu capere in aliamque linguam transferre valuerit" (See Prof. Stokes, "R. I. Academy Proceedings," May, 1892).
St. Jerome tells us that the people of Marseilles were in his day trilingual, "Massiliam Phoc?i condiderunt quos ait Varro trilingues esse, quod et Gr?ce loquantur, et Latine et Gallice" (Migne's edition, vol. vii. p. 425).
See appendix to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. iii. p. 547—
"Margaid mor na n-gall ngregach I mbid or is ard étach.
"He is said to have spent eighteen or twenty years there and to have acquired all the wisdom of the Scots. The reason why he was sent to Slane, as Dr. Healy well observes, was, not because it was the most celebrated school of the time, but because it was in Meath where the High-kings mostly dwelt, and it was only natural to bring the boy to some place near the Royal Court. ("Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 590.)
"Quos omnes Scotti libentissime suscipientes victum eis quotidianum sine pretio, libros quoque ad legendum, et magisterium gratuitum, pr?bere curabant" ("Ecc. Hist.," book iii. chap. 27). Amongst these were the celebrated Egbert, of whom Bede tells us so much, and St. Chad.
He is called Mailduf by Bede, and Malmesbury Maildufi urbem, which shows that the aspirated "b" in dubh had twelve hundred years ago the sound of "f" as it has to-day in Connacht.
O'Reilly states that the poem consisted of ninety-six lines, but Hardiman, in his "Irish Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 372, gives only sixty. Hardiman has written on the margin of O'Reilly's "Irish Writers" in my possession, "I have a copy, the character is ancient and very obscure." Aldfrid may well have written such a poem, of which the copy printed by Hardiman may be a somewhat modernised version. It begins—
"Ro dheat an inis finn Fáil In Eirinn re imarbháidh, Iomad ban, ni baoth an breas, Iomad laoch, iomad cleireach.
"It was admirably and fairly literally translated by Mangan for Montgomery. His fourth line, however, runs, "Many clerics and many laymen," which conveys no meaning save that of populousness. I have altered this line to make it suit the Irish "many a hero, many a cleric."
"Natione quidem Gallus," says Bede, "sed tunc legendarum gratia scripturarum in Hibernia non parvo tempore demoratus."
Probably Clonmacnois. See Stokes, "Celtic Church," p. 214, and Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 283.
His astronomical work, written in 814-16, remains as yet unpublished.