with the rod, and smite the sea with it, and God shall make manifest
His own will to thee in that wise," and his disciples besought him to
do that, for they were faithful people. His staff was [accordingly]
given into Deglan's hand, and he smote the water with it in the name
of the Trinity, and he made the sign of the cross of crucifixion with
it on the water, and quickly the sea began to move out of his own
place--so quickly that it was scarcely the swift monsters[51] of the
sea could keep pace with it by swimming, and it left many of them on
the shore high and dry, who were not able to depart with the sea on
account of the rapidity with which it moved. And Deglan followed the
sea with his crozier in his hand, and his disciples followed him, and
there was a cry and a great sounding from the sea and from the monsters
departing. And when Deglan reached the place where Tarmuin-na-mara
is now, a young child of Deglan's disciples by the name of Mainchin
spake, he being terrified at the noises of the sea and at the roaring
of the unknown monsters with their mouths open, following the water.
"Father," said he, "thou hast displaced the sea enough, for I am afraid
of yonder awful monsters." At the word of the child the sea stopped.
And Deglan did not like that, and he struck a light blow on his nose,
and three drops of blood dropped from him to the ground under Deglan's
feet in three places. And Deglan blessed the nose, and the blood
ceased suddenly. And Deglan said, "it is not I who have removed the
sea but the power of God, and it would have removed it further had it
not been for the words thou spakest." And in the place where those
drops of blood fell, three little wells of sweet shining water burst
forth from them under the feet of Deglan. And those wells are still
there. And they are seldom [without?] that colour of blood upon them
as a remembrance of those miracles. And there is a mile in length and
in breadth around them, and the name of it is "the tramore," or "great
shore," and good and profitable is the land of Tramore, and there was
[built] Deglan's monastery. And the crozier that Deglan had in his
hand, when performing that miracle, its name was "Feardhacht Deglan."
We shall say something more about its miracles in another place.
[51] Biastaide luathe na mara.
OF HOW ARDMORE GOT ITS NAME, AND OF ST. DEGLAN'S STONE.
Deglan proceeded to say mass in a church that lay before him in his
way, and a small black stone was sent from heaven through the window
of the church to him, and it remained on the altar in his presence.
Great joy seized Deglan at beholding it, and he gave praise and glory
to God for it. Now his mind was firmly set against ill ways and the
unreason of the heathen after the possession of the stone, and he gave
that stone to Lunan, son of the King of the Romans, who was in his
company, to keep and to carry for him. And the name of that stone was
Bobhur in Ireland,[52] namely Deglan's "Duibhin" (or little black thing)
and it was from its colour it received that name, for by its colour it
was black, and it revealed [things] by the grace of God, and Deglan
performed many miracles [by it], and it remains to this day in Deglan's
church....
* * * * *
... and on one of these occasions (a visit to Rome) he went to a holy
bishop of the Britons named David, to the church which is called
Cillmhin [Killveen], which is beside the shore of the sea which divides
Britain from Ireland. And the bishop received him with honour, and he
was for forty days in his society, with love and joy, and he used to
say mass each day there, and they knit themselves together with bonds
of brotherhood and partnership, and [they bound] the people of the
place after them. And on his completing forty days there, they parted
with salutation, and he said farewell to David and gave him a kiss in
token of peace. And he himself and his disciples went to the shore of
the sea to go into the ship to go to Ireland. And that stone I spake
of, which was sent to Deglan from heaven, a monk was carrying it at the
time; for Deglan was unwilling ever to part with it, and it used always
to be in his company. And when they came from the shore into the ship
the monk had forgotten it, [and left it] on a rock which was on the
shore. And until they had gone about half way over the sea they never
remembered it. And when they did remember it Deglan was melancholy, and
so was every one else, after the gift, which had come down from heaven
to Deglan, being forgotten in a place from which they never thought to
get it back. Deglan looked above his head to heaven, and clearly prayed
to God in his mind. And then he said to his disciples, "lay aside your
melancholy, for God who made a gift of that stone from heaven at the
first can now send it to us in an unusual ship." Wonderful and splendid
it was that the rock without understanding or reason submitted to the
Creator contrary to nature, for it swam directly after the ship, with
the stone on it, and it was not long until Deglan and his disciples
saw the rock after them, and the stone upon it. And when Deglan's
people beheld that miracle, they were filled with the love of God and
with honour for their master, Deglan. And Deglan spake prophetically:
"Let the stone go on in front of you, and follow ye it, for whatsoever
harbour it shall arrive at, it is near it that my city shall be, and
my house and bishoprick,[53] and it is from that place I shall go to
God's heaven, and it is there that my resurrection shall be." And the
stone went out past the ship, and ceased the great pace at which it had
proceeded up to then, and remained a little in advance of the ship, so
that it could be seen from on board the ship, yet in such wise that the
ship might not overtake it. And the rock steered for Ireland so that it
took harbour in the south, in the Decies, at an island that was at that
time called Ard-Innis Caerach, or High Island of the Sheep, and the
ship took the same harbour, as Deglan had told them.
[52] This passage about Bobhur is not in the R.I.A. copy only the part
about the Duibhin.
[53] Mo chathair si agus mo thigheas easbogoidheacht in my MS. "Mo
theaghdhais easbogoideachta" 23 M 50. 1758.
Deglan, that holy man, went on shore, and he gave praise and glory and
thanks to God because that he had reached the place of his resurrection
on that island, where the sheep of the king of the Déise used to be
kept usually and herded. And there was a pleasant high hill on it. And
one of his disciples said to Deglan on going to the top of that hill
"how shall this Ard beag (Little Height) support thy people."
"Beloved son," said Deglan, "say not so. This is no Little Height, but
an Ard Mór (Great Height)," and the name has clung to it ever since,
namely Ardmore of Deglan.
[Illustration: THE LANDING OF ST. DEGLAN AT ARDMORE]
ST. PAUL'S VISION; OR, THE LAST END OF THE MAN WHO LEADS A BAD LIFE.
PREFACE.
I took the following very curious account from an Irish MS. a couple of
hundred years old, which had been thrown away on a loft in a farm house
in the County Meath before I secured it. There are other copies of this
story in the Royal Irish Academy, and a fragment in the library of
University College, Dublin, but mine is the best copy I have met. There
is no other version, so far as I know, of St. Paul's Vision that is at
all like this. The Vision was at one time well known in Europe. It was
at first, according to Tischendorf, probably composed in Greek, and
there is a version of it in Syrian and another in Latin. The story is
also found in old High German, in Danish, French and Slavonic. The best
and longest Latin version is to be found in the Bibliotheque Nationale
at Paris, but there is not a word in it, nor in the Greek, nor in the
Syrian, of the driving of the soul out of the body, or of the angel
Michael's guiding St. Paul to the bedside of the dying man. As it is
unlikely that some Irish Gael composed all this out of his own head, I
can only surmise that it is a translation of a Latin or Greek original
now lost, and that the story now survives through its translation into
Irish alone.
We know that the Irish have saved for us several pieces of an
apocryphal or mystic character, whose originals are now lost, such as
the extraordinary piece called the "Ever-new Tongue," and the "Vision
of Tundal."
This story contains a close resemblance to the "Debate between the
Body and the Soul," which is usually known as the "Visio Philaberti,"
ascribed to Walter Mapes, or Map, or else to Walter Grosseteste, bishop
of Lincoln, and of which a kind of middle Irish version exists in the
"Leabhar Breac" and was published by Atkinson in his "Passions and
Homilies." Another imperfect version was published by Dottin in the
"Revue Celtique," 1903. My MS. from which I have taken this Vision of
St. Paul's contains an excellent copy of it also. Almost all the Irish
copies ascribe it to Grosseteste.
The longest Latin version of this Vision contains 51 chapters or
sections, and deals with St. Paul's account of Paradise and his other
wanderings, as well as with the infernal regions.
There is a "Passion of St. Paul" in the Leabhar Breac, or Speckled
Book, but there is not a word about this Vision in it. I found an
account of St. Paul in another Irish MS., probably taken from some lost
source. "A small, miserable-looking person was the apostle Paul. Broad
shoulders he had; a white face with a sedate demeanour. His head small.
Pleasant bright eyes he had. Long brows, a projecting (?) nose and a
long beard with a little grey hair."
The horrid description of the soul leaving the body with such
reluctance has a curious Pagan parallel in an exactly reverse sense
in Lucan's Pharsalia, Book vi., 721, in the dreadful account of the
sorceress conjuring back a soul into the dead body, and its reluctance
to enter it. "Adspicit adstantem projecti corporis umbram Exanimes
artus, invisaque claustra timentem, Carceris antiqui: pavet ire in
pectus apertum, Visceraque, et ruptas letali vulnere fibras. Ah miser
extremum qui mortis munus iniquae, Eripitur non posse mori, etc."
The mediæval Irish translator of the Pharsalia revelled in this
sorceress episode.
For the original of the following piece, see "Religious Songs of
Connacht," vol. II.
THE STORY
The Apostle Paul, upon a certain time, chanced to be in a city of
the name of Smyrna, in the land of Syria. And this is how Paul was,
namely, making intercession with God, the all-powerful, to reveal to
him something of the pains of hell, so that all the more for receiving
that revelation, he might perform the will of God, and give instruction
to the congregations. And, as he was beseeching God in this wise,
there cometh unto him a youth, and he asketh Paul to go with him, to
confirm in his faith a man who was at the point of death. Paul departed
along with the youth to the place where was the sick man, and him they
found before them struggling with the Death. Now this is the manner
wherein the soul parteth from the body--as saith St. Bernard, one of
the arch-doctors of the Trinity. He saith that the Death cometh in a
cold, unrecognisable, insufferable shape, stabbing the body with spits
and arrows. And first it cometh into the outer members, namely the
centre of the soles of the feet, and of the palms of the hands, in the
veins, and in every other member of the body, until it hunt the noble
soul before it out of every member of the body, even as the fisherman
routeth the fish under the hollows of the banks (?) to the weedy-place
(?) in which the net is set to catch them. Even so doth the Death,
routing before it the soul into the heart--the first member of a person
to be alive, and the last member to die.
But, howsoever, upon the coming of Paul and of the messenger to the
sick man, they perceived how he himself and the Death were struggling
with one another, and that the Death was after taking possession of all
the body, except that the soul was in the lower chamber of the heart,
striving to conceal itself from the Death. But that was in vain for it,
for when Death came to the heart, he began ploughing and boring the
heart, for he felt certain that it was there the soul was. But when the
soul felt its enemy and adversary the Death close to it, it thought to
leave the body and to come forth out of the mouth, since it found no
dwelling place nor shelter in the body. But it is what it finds before
itself there, a frightful fearsome host of black, ugly-coloured devils,
and fiery flames full of stench, and a loathsome, insufferable, evil
smell coming forth out of their mouths, and each one of them watching
with fierceness for the soul to come forth out of the mouth and out
of the body, for it was in a state of damnation, without repentance,
that this sinner was dying. And when the poor soul beheld this devilish
guard in front of it, the soul returned fearful (?) and quaking and
cometh into the passage of the nose and thought to come out there. But
it beholds the same host before it. It returneth full of weariness and
misery and goeth to the eyes, but it is what it findeth there before
it--many black, ugly-coloured devils with fiery flames out of their
mouths and gullets, and each of them saying, "What is this delay of
Death's that he routeth not out to us this damned soul forth from the
greedy body in which it is, till we bear it with us to its own abode--a
place where there is darkness and eternal pain for ever and ever as
its evil deeds have deserved [that were wrought] during the time that
it was its own master?" And on the poor soul's hearing these words
it screamed and cried feebly, and wept tearfully, sorrowfully, and
with bitter weariness, for it recognised then that it was parted from
the eternal life for ever and ever, and it turns back again to the
hollows of the ears, where it thought to find a way out, but it is what
it finds there before it many loathly worms and evil-shaped terrific
serpents of various kinds. When the soul saw that, it returned back to
the heart, for it desired to go, as it seemed to it, into hiding, but
it found Death before it there, ploughing and boring the heart. Then
the soul considered that it had no escape on any side. It despaired of
God and of the whole angelic court, and it went aloft to the crown of
the head. It goes out and leaves the body and settles on the top of
the head. It looks down at that tomb where it had been--namely, the
body--and said, "Oh! all-powerful God! is it possible that this is the
body wherein I was for a brief [space of] happiness; and if it is,
where has gone the blue clear-seeing eye, or the crimson cheek? 'Tis
what I behold in place of the eyes--hollow dry cavities sucked back
into the hollow of the skull; the ruddy handsome cheek now dark and
beetle-hued; the mouth that was to-day red and shapely now closed, not
to be opened, livid, hideous, without talk, without speech; and oh!
all-powerful God! alas for him who was deceived by the companion at the
raising (?) of the body's strength, power, pride, and spirit, which was
begotten and which was alive, and whose share of gold and treasures was
great; but I do not see one thing of all that in his possession now,
nor advantaging nor comforting him at all; but I see that it is ill he
spent the gifts that God gave him, and that on account of this he has
damned me for ever."
The body spake, and said: "If it were not for thee these devilish
furious hosts would not come to claim me now. For this is how thou
wast when thou wast bound to me; thou wast an active, most powerful
spirit, full of understanding and of feeling, and of clear intellect,
of nobility and of honour; thou didst recognise between evil and good;
whilst I was nothing but a fistful of clay, without beauty or strength,
or feeling, or sense, or understanding, or power, or guidance, or
movement, or sight, or hearing, until thou wast bound to me, and for
that reason it is thou who art guilty and not I."
"Thou greedy, carnal, unsubduable worm, all thou sayest is not true,
for I was a clean, glorious spirit," said the soul, "who had no
necessity for food or clothing or for anything at all, of all that is
on the earth, but the joy of holy life, until I was bound to thee. And
this is why I was bound to thee, for thee to spend the activity of
thy feet, the labour of thy hands, the sight of thy eyes, the hearing
of thy ears, the speech of thy mouth, the thoughts of thy heart, and
every other gift that God gave thee, so as to do ministering, to
make submission, and to perform every other service to glorious God
throughout thy period on this world, so that after that I and thou
might find the fruit of those good deeds in the enjoyment of eternal
glory in the company of God and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of
all the angelic heavenly court, where cometh everyone who has done
good deeds, such as fasting, alms-giving, prayers, acts of friendship
to a neighbour, listening willingly to the words of God, and acting
accordingly; and who used not to refuse to relieve the necessity of
the poor, and the like. But those are not the things that thou didst,
but spending the gifts God gave with gluttony, drunkenness, adultery,
pride, arrogance, greed; with the ruin of thy neighbour's portion;
with lies, noisiness (?) anger, quarrelling, back-biting, folly,
pitilessness, injustice, wrath, sloth, envy, lechery, with the spoil of
the poor, and with every other sort of sin that the human body thought
pleasant; and lo! what fruit hast thou for those misdeeds. Dead and
feeble are thy limbs which were once active and strong; closed is the
mouth wherewith thou didst use to hold unlawful discourse; weak is
the tongue wherewith thou wast wont to utter obscene barbarous words,
giving ill-fame, reproach, disrespect, shame, contempt, displeasure,
and every other sort [of evil] that thy thoughts and intellect could
bring to mind. Deaf is the ear that used to listen with pleasure to
murmurings, to scandal, to the back-biting of neighbours. Blind and
hollow is the eye that used to look with greed, partiality, and malice.
There is no fairness nor beauty in the hand on whose fingers the gems
used to be. I see them not on thee now. And, moreover, I see not the
gold nor the silver nor the various other goods which thou didst get
by defrauding, which thou didst rob, which thou gottest from the weak,
from the orphan, and from the miserable, with deceptions and ill-will.
They are now in the possession of other people, and not one thing of
them doing good to thee, but [doing] every evil that is possible to
reckon. And, therefore, O greedy, lustful body, most unsubduable worm
that God ever created, it is thou art most guilty and not I," said the
soul.
After the soul uttering those words miserably and wearily, an evil
spirit of that damned host that was waiting to get the soul into its
own possession spake, and said: "It is a wonder how long Death is
without routing this damned soul to us forth out of the body."
Another devil answered him and spake: "It is not possible for us to
possess it or to take it until Jesus Christ pass judgment upon it
first, according to its actions, bad and good. However, its possession
for ever is ours; for ever, because it was to us it did service and
ministry whilst it was living, and ours is the possession of soul and
body from the day of the last judgment for ever."
After the devils speaking these words, a shining, happy host of the
angels of heaven lowered themselves, with singing of music, round about
the body, and in their midst a Youth more glorious than the sun. Many
awful, wide-opened wounds in His skin, and they dripping blood. The
Youth spake to the dead, and asked him how he had spent the life that
he got, or the gifts that God gave him. The body answered and said: "O
Jesus Christ, O Lamb, Son of God, I am not able to deny it, that it was
ill I spent my time and the gifts that I got; that Thou didst suffer
passion-pains and death on my behalf, and that I paid no regard to
that, and therefore I am myself admitting that Thou hast no power (from
the true right of Thy divinity, and from the plentifulness of my evil
deeds, since I did not make repentance of them either early or late)
not to pass judgment damning me now. And alas! now I see the wrong, the
loss, and the harm, of the neglect I was guilty of, in putting off
repentance, until Thy messenger, the Death, came to me, and, my grief!
I was not prepared for him, and, moreover, I got no respite when he
came, until he destroyed me--and that is my account of my life, and
indeed it is more evil than it is good."
"Well, then," said the Youth on whom were the wounds, "all that thou
hast committed of faults and of evil deeds throughout thy life, if
thou wert to make true repentance from thy heart of them, I would make
thee as clean as the sun, and I would place thee in the company of the
angels and of the saints, enjoying everlasting glory, and the devilish
host which is waiting for thee would have no power nor might over thee.
But since thou hast not done that, it is necessary to pass judgment
upon thee according to thy deeds, bad and good."
Then there came each one of the demon host that was waiting for the
poor soul, and a roll of dark black parchment in the hand of each
of them, in which was written all that the dead man had done in the
service of the devil. On the Saviour Jesus Christ perceiving that, it
was what He said, "Take with you this damned soul to hell, to pain it
till the day of the general judgment, and from that out ye shall have
the body as well as the soul, enduring eternal pains."
Then came the devilish host that was waiting for the soul. They drew
the poor soul with fiery crooks, and they made of it a lump of fire,
and they were hunting it before them to hell, and it calling and crying
out faintly and fearfully.
Paul the Apostle was observing each thing of those, because it was God
who had sent His messenger to him, so that he might get a view of the
person who led a bad life, at the point of death, according to the
prayer he had made. Then, upon the departure of the accursed host and
of the soul out of sight, Paul cried aloud, weeping and lamenting, to
get a sight of the end that was being brought upon the soul. Then the
messenger asked Paul did he desire to get a sight of the pains of that
soul and of the other damned souls. "I should so desire," said Paul,
"if it were God's will." "Well, then," said the messenger, "I will give
thee a sight of them, for I am not a man of this earth, but an angel
that God has sent to thee to show thee these things, and I am Michael
the Arch-Angel," said he.