country; some of the oldest of them are still to be seen, as at
Donaghpatrick, Clonmacnoise and Glendalough. Roofed with stone, they are
well fitted to resist the waste of time. An intense spiritual and moral
life inspired the students, a life rich also in purely intellectual and
artistic force. The ancient churches speak for themselves; the artistic
spirit of the time is splendidly embodied in the famous Latin
manuscript of the Gospels, called the Book of Kells, the most beautiful
specimen of illumination in the world. The wonderful colored initial
letters reproduce and develop the designs of the old gold work, the
motives of which came, it would seem, from the Baltic, with the De
Danaan tribes. We can judge of the quiet and security of the early
disciples at Kells, the comfort and amenity of their daily life, the
spirit of comity and good-will, the purity of inspiration of that early
time, by the artistic truth and beauty of these illuminated pages and
the perfection with which the work was done. Refined and difficult arts
are the evidence of refined feeling, abundant moral and spiritual force,
and a certain material security and ease surrounding the artist. When
these arts are freely offered in the service of religion, they are
further evidence of widespread fervor and aspiration, a high and worthy
ideal of life.
Yet we shall be quite wrong if we imagine an era of peace and security
following the epoch of the first great Messenger. Nothing is further
from the truth. The old tribal strife continued for long centuries; the
instincts which inspired it are, even now, not quite outworn. Chief
continued to war against chief, province against province, tribe
against tribe, even among the fervent converts of the first teachers.
Saint Brigid is one of the great figures in the epoch immediately
succeeding the first coming of the Word. She was the foundress of a
school of religious teaching for women at Kildare, or Killdara, "The
Church of the Oak-woods," whose name still records her work. Her work,
her genius, her power, the immense spiritual influence for good which
flowed from her, entitle her to be remembered with the women of
apostolic times, who devoted their whole lives to the service of the
divine. We have seen the esteem in which women were always held in
Ireland. St. Brigid and those who followed in her steps gave effect to
that high estimation, and turned it to a more spiritual quality, so that
now, as in all past centuries, the ideal of womanly purity is higher in
Ireland than in any country in the world.
This great soul departed from earthly life in the year 525, a generation
after the death of the first Messenger. To show how the old order
continued with the new, we may record the words of the Chronicler for
the following year: "526: The battle of Eiblinne, by Muirceartac son of
Erc; the battle of Mag-Ailbe; the battle of Almain; the battle of
Ceann-eic; the plundering of the Cliacs; and the battle of Eidne against
the men of Connacht." Three of these battles were fought at no great
distance from St. Brigid's Convent.
The mediaeval Chronicler quotes the old Annalist for the following year:
"The king, the son of Erc, returned to the side of the descendants of
Nial. Blood reached the girdle in each plain. The exterior territories
were enriched. Seventeen times nine chariots he brought, and long shall
it be remembered. He bore away the hostages of the Ui-Neill with the
hostages of the plain of Munster."
Ten years later we find the two sons of this same king, Muirceartac son
of Erc, by name Fergus and Domnall, fighting under the shadow of
Knocknarea mountain against Eogan Bel the king of Connacht; the ancient
Annalist, doubtless contemporary with the events recorded, thus
commemorated the battle in verse:
"The battle of the Ui-Fiacrac was fought with the fury of edged weapons
against Bel;
"The kine of the enemy roared with the javelins, the battle was spread
out at Crinder;
"The River of Shells bore to the great sea the blood of men with their
flesh;
"They carried many trophies across Eaba, together with the head of
Eogan Bel."
During this stormy time, which only carried forward the long progress of
fighting since the days of the prime, a famous school of learning and
religion had been founded at Moville by Finian, "the tutor of the saints
of Ireland." The home of his church and school is a very beautiful one,
with sombre mountains behind rising from oak-woods into shaggy masses of
heather, the blue waters of Lough Foyle in front, and across the mouth
of the lough the silver sands and furrowed chalk hills of Antrim,
blending into green plains. Here the Psalms and the Gospels were taught
in Latin to pupils who had in no wise given up their love for the old
poetry and traditions of their motherland. Here Colum studied,
afterwards called Colum Kill, "Saint Colum of the Churches," and here
arose a memorable dispute concerning a Latin manuscript of the Psalms.
The manuscript belonged to Finian, founder of the school, and was
esteemed one of the treasures of his college. Colum, then a young
student, ardently longed for a copy, and, remaining in the church after
service, he daily copied a part of the sacred text. When his work was
completed, Finian discovered it, and at once claimed the copy of his
book as also his. The matter was submitted to an umpire, who gave the
famous decision: "Unto every cow her calf; unto every book its
copy"--the copy belonged to the owner of the book. This early decision
of copyright was by no means acceptable to the student Colum. He
disputed its justice, and the quarrel spread till it resulted in a
battle. The discredit attaching to the whole episode resulted in the
banishment of Colum, who sailed away northward and eastward towards the
isles and fiords of that land which, from the Irish Scoti who civilized
it, now bears the name of Scotland. Let us recall a few verses written
by Colum on his departure, in a version which echoes something of the
original melody and form:
"We are rounding Moy-n-Olurg, we sweep by its head and
We plunge through the Foyle,
Whose swans could enchant with their music the dead and
Make pleasure of toil....
Oh, Erin, were wealth my desire, what a wealth were
To gain far from thee,
In the land of the stranger, but there even health were
A sickness to me!
Alas for the voyage, oh high King of Heaven,
Enjoined upon me,
For that I on the red plain of bloody Cooldrevin
Was present to see.
How happy the son is of Dima; no sorrow
For him is designed,
He is having this hour, round his own Kill 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 Ros-grenca the cattle are lowing
At earliest dawn,
On the brink of the summer the pigeons are cooing
And doves on the lawn...."
In another measure, he again mourns his exile: "Happy to be on Ben Edar,
before going over the sea; white, white the dashing of the wave against
its face; the bareness of its shore and its border....
"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...."
This great-hearted and impetuous exile did not waste his life in useless
regrets. Calling forth the fire of his genius, and facing the reality of
life, he set himself to work, spreading the teaching of the New Way
among the Picts of the north--the same Picts who, in years gone by, had
raged against the barrier of Hadrian between Forth and Clyde. The year
of his setting out was 563; the great center of his work was in the
sacred isle of Iona, off the Ross of Mull. Iona stands in the rush of
Atlantic surges and fierce western storms, yet it is an island of rare
beauty amid the tinted mists of summer dawns. Under the year 592, a
century after Saint Patrick's death, we find this entry in the
Chronicle: "Colum Kill, son of Feidlimid, Apostle of Scotland, head of
the piety of the most part of Ireland and Scotland after Patrick, died
in his own church in Iona in Scotland, after the thirty-fifth year of
his pilgrimage, on Sunday night, the ninth of June. Seventy-seven years
was his whole age when he resigned his spirit to heaven." The corrected
date is 596.
We can see in Colum of the Churches the very spirit of turbulence and
adventure, the fierce impetuosity and readiness for dispute, which led
to the contests between the chieftains of Ireland, the wars between
province and province, often between valley and valley. It is the same
spiritual energy, working itself out in another way, transmuted by the
sacred fire into a divine mission. In the same way the strong will of
Meave, the romantic power of Deirdré and Grania, transmuted to ideal
purposes, was the inspiration of Saint Brigid and so many like her, who
devoted their powers to the religious teaching of women.
We should doubtless fail utterly to understand the riddle of history,
were we to regret the wild warring of these early times as a mere
lamentable loss of life, a useless and cruel bloodshed. We are too much
given to measuring other times and other moods of the soul by our own,
and many false judgments issue from this error. Peaceful material
production is our main purpose, and we learn many lessons of the Will
embodied in the material world when we follow this purpose honestly. But
before our age could begin, it was necessary for the races to come to
personal consciousness. This end seems everywhere to have been reached
by a long epoch of strife, the contending of man against man, of tribe
against tribe. Thus were brought to full consciousness the instinct of
personal valor, personal honor and personal readiness to face death.
Only after this high personal consciousness is kindled can a race enter
the wider path of national life, where vivid and intense individuals
unite their forces to a common end, reaching a common consciousness, and
holding their power in common for the purposes of all. After the lessons
of fighting come the lessons of work. For these lessons of work, for
the direct touch with the everlasting Will gained in all honest work,
our own age is to be valued, far more than for the visible and material
fruits which that work produces.
In like manner the old epoch of war is to be esteemed for the lessons it
taught of high valor, sacrifice, heroic daring. And to what admirable
ends these same qualities may tend we can see in a life like that of
Colum Kill, "head of the piety of the most part of Ireland and Scotland
after Patrick."
Yet the days of old were grim enough to live in. Let this record of some
half-century later testify. It is but one year culled from a long red
rank of years. We give the Chronicler's own words: "645: The sixth year
of Conall and Ceallac. Mac Laisre, abbot of Bangor, died on May 16.
Ragallac son of Uatac, King of Connacht, was killed by Maelbrigde son of
Motlacan, of which was said:
"Ragallac son of Uatac was pierced on the back of a white
steed;
Muiream has well lamented him; Catal has well avenged him.
Catal is this day in battle, though bound to peace in the
presence of kings;
Though Catal is without a father, his father is not without
vengeance.
Estimate his terrible revenge from the account of it related:
He slew six men and fifty; he made sixteen devastations;
I had my share like another in the revenge of Ragallac,--
I have the gray beard in my hand, of Maelbrigde son of Motlacan."
These are evidently the very words of one who fought in the battle. Nor
need this in any way surprise us, for we have far older Chronicles set
down year by year in unbroken record. The matter is easy to prove. The
Chronicles of Ulster record eclipses of the sun and moon as early as
495,--two years after Saint Patrick's death. It was, of course, the
habit of astronomers to reckon eclipses backwards, and of annalists to
avail themselves of these reckonings. The Venerable Bede, for example,
has thus inserted eclipses in his history. The result is that the
Venerable Bede has the dates several days wrong, while the Chronicles of
Ulster, where direct observation took the place of faulty reckoning, has
them right, to the day and hour. It is only in quite modern times that
we have reached sufficiently accurate knowledge of the moon's movements
to vindicate the old Ulster Annalists, who began their work not less
than a hundred and fifty years before the battle we have just recorded.
Nor should we exaggerate the condition of the time, thinking of it as
altogether given over to ravaging and devastation. Even though there
were two or three expeditions and battles every year, these would only
affect a small part of the whole country. Over all the rest, the tending
of cattle in the glades of the forest, the sowing and reaping of wheat
and oats, the gathering of fruit and nuts, continued in quiet
contentment and peace. The young men practiced the arts of war and
exercised themselves in warlike games. The poets sang to them, the
heralds recounted the great doings of old, how Cuculain kept the ford,
how Concobar thirsted in his heart for Deirdré, how the son of Cumal
went to war, how golden-tongued Ossin was ensnared by the spirits. The
gentle life of tillage and the keeping of cattle could never engage the
whole mental force of so vigorous a race. What wonder, then, that, when
a chieftain had some real or imagined wrong to avenge, or some adventure
to propose,--what wonder that bold spirits were ever ready to accompany
him, leaving the women to their distaffs and the tending of children and
the grinding of corn? Mounting their horses, they rode forth through the
woods, under the huge arms of the oak-trees; along the banks of
swift-gliding rivers, through passes of the lowering hills. While still
in familiar territory, the time of the march was passed in song and
story. Then came increased precaution, and gradually heightened pulses
marked the stages of the way. The rival chieftain, warned by his scouts
and outlying tribesmen, got word of their approach, and hastily
replenishing his granaries and driving the cattle into the great circle
of his embankments, prepared to meet the coming foe. Swords, spears,
bows, arrows were the arms of both sides. Though leather tunics were
common, coats of mail came only at a later date. The attackers under
cover of the night sped across the open ground before the fort, and
tried to storm the fortress, the defenders meanwhile showering down
keen-pointed arrows on them from above. Both parties, under the
chieftains' guidance, fought fiercely, in a fever of excitement, giving
no heed to wounds, seeing nothing but the foe and the battlements to be
scaled. Then either a successful sortie broke the ranks of the
assailants and sent them back to their forest camp in wild disorder, or,
the stockade giving way, the stormers swept in like a wave of the sea,
and all was chaos and wild struggle hand to hand. Whatever the outcome,
both sides thought of the wild surge of will and valor in that hour as
the crowning event of their lives.
Meanwhile, within the quiet enclosures of the monasteries and religious
schools, the spirit of the time was working with not less fervor, to
invisible and ideal ends. At Bangor, on the neck of the northern Ards;
at Moville, where Lough Foyle spreads its inland sea; at Saul, where the
first Messenger won his first convert; at Devenish Island amid the
waters of Lough Erne; at Monasterboice in the plain of Louth; at
Grlendalough, among the solemn hills of Wicklow; at Kildare, beneath the
oak-woods; at Durrow, amid the central marshes, and many another ancient
seat of learning, the way of wisdom and holiness was trod with gladness.
Latin had been taught since the early days of the Message; the native
tongue of Ireland, consecrated in the hymns of St. Patrick and the poems
of St. Colum of the Churches, was the language in which all pupils were
taught, the modern ministrant to the classical speech of Rome. Nor were
the Scriptures alone studied. Terence, Virgil, Ovid, the Augustans and
the men of the silver age, were familiar in the Irish schools; and to
these Latin writers were soon added the Greeks, more especially--as was
natural--the Greek Fathers, the religious philosophers, and those who
embodied the thought and controversies of the early Christian centuries.
To Greek, Hebrew was added, so that both Old and New Testaments were
known in their proper tongues. About the time when "Ragallac son of
Uatac was pierced on the back of a white steed," Saint Camin in his
island school at Inis Caltra, where red mountains hem in Lough Derg of
the Shannon, was writing his Commentary on the Psalms, recording the
Hebrew readings on the margin of the page. A few years before that
battle, in 634, Saint Cummian of Durrow, some thirty miles to the east
of Camin's Holy Island, wrote to his brother, the Abbot of Iona in the
northern seas, quoting Latin writers sacred and secular, as well as
Origen, Cyril and Pachomius among the Greeks. The learned man discusses
the astronomical systems of the Mediterranean world, giving the names of
months and cycles in Hebrew, Greek and Egyptian, and telling of his
researches into the true time of Easter, while on a journey to Italy and
Rome. This letter, which has come down to our days, is first-hand
testimony to the learning of the early Irish schools.
[Illustration: Ancient Cross, Glendalough.]
Fifty years later, in 683, we hear of the Saxons for the first and
almost the last time in the history of Ireland. It is recorded that the
North Saxons raided Mag Breag in the East of Meath, attacking both
churches and chieftains. They carried away many hostages and much spoil,
but the captives were soon after set at liberty and sent home again, on
the intercession of a remarkable man, Adamnan, the biographer of Colum
of the Churches, whose success in his mission was held to be miraculous.
For more than a century after this single Saxon raid Ireland was wholly
undisturbed by foreign invasion, and the work of building churches,
founding schools, studying Hebrew and Greek and Latin, went on with
increasing vigor and success. An army of missionaries went forth to
other lands, following in the footsteps of Colum of the Churches, and of
these we shall presently speak. The life of the church was so rich and
fruitful that we are led to think of this as a period of childlike and
idyllic peace.
Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The raids,
devastations and wars between province and province, tribe and tribe,
went on without a year's interruption. This was the normal course of the
nation's life, the natural outlet of the nation's energy: not less a
visible sign of invisible inward power than the faith and fervor of the
schools. We shall get the truest flavor of the times by quoting again
from the old Annals. That they were recorded year by year, we have
already seen; the records of frosts, great snow-storms, years of rich
harvests and the like, interspersed among the fates of kings, show how
faithfully the annals were kept,--as, for example, the winter of great
cold, "when all the rivers and lakes of Ireland were frozen over," in
the year after the Saxon raid.
Here again, under the year 701, is the word of a man then living: "After
Loing Seac son of Angus son of Domnall had been eight years in the
sovreignty of Ireland, he was slain in the battle of Ceann by Cealleac
of Lough Cime, the son of Ragallac, as Cealleac himself testifies:
"'For his deeds of ambition he was slain in the morning at
Glas Cuilg;
I wounded Loing Seac with a sword, the monarch of Ireland
round.'"
Two years later Saint Adamnan died, after governing the Abbey of Iona
for six and twenty years. It was said of him that "He made a slave of
himself to his virtues," and his great life-work, the Latin history of
Saint Colum of the Churches, founder of the Iona Abbey, to this day
testifies to his high learning and wisdom.
Fourteen years later "Leinster was five times devastated by the
Ui-Neill," the descendants of Nial, and a battle was fought between the
men of Connacht and Munster. Thus the lives of saints and warriors were
interwoven. On very rare occasions the two lives of the race came into
collision. Thus, a quarrel arose between Congus the Abbot and Aed Roin
king of Ulad. Congus summoned to his aid the chief of the Ui-Neill, Aed
Allan by name, in these verses:
"Say to the cold Aed Allan that I have been oppressed by
a feeble enemy:
Aed Roin insulted me last night at Cill Cunna of the sweet
music."
Aed Allan made these verses on his way to battle to avenge the insult:
"For Cill Cunna the church of my spiritual father,
I take this day a journey on the road.
Aed Roin shall leave his head with me,
Or I shall leave my head with him."
The further history of that same year, 733, is best told in the words of
the Annals: "Aed Allan, king of Ireland, assembled his forces to
proceed into Leinster, and he arrived at the Ford of Seannait (in
Kildare). The Leinstermen collected the greatest number they were able,
to defend their rights against him. The king Aed Allan himself went into
the battle, and the chieftains of the north along with him. The
chieftains of Leinster came with their kings into the battle, and
bloodily and heroically was the battle fought between them. Heroes were
slaughtered and bodies were hacked. Aed Allan and Aed, son of Colgan,
king of Leinster, met each other, and Aed son of Colgan was slain by Aed
Allan. The Leinstermen were killed, slaughtered, cut off, and dreadfully
exterminated in this battle, so that there escaped of them but a small
remnant and a few fugitives."
To round out the picture, to contrast the two streams of the nation's
life, let us give this, from the following year: "734: Fifth year of Aed
Allan. Saint Samtain, virgin, of Cluain Bronaig (Longford), died on
December 19. It was of her that Aed Allan gave this testimony:
"Samtain for enlightening various sinners,
A servant who observed stern chastity,
In the wide plain of fertile Meath
Great suffering did Samtain endure;
She undertook a thing not easy,--
Fasting for the kingdom above.
She lived on scanty food;
Hard were her girdles;
She struggled in venomous conflicts;
Pure was her heart amid the wicked.
To the bosom of the Lord, with a pure death,
Samtain passed from her trials."
X.
THE RAIDS OF THE NORTHMEN.
A.D. 750-1050.
Aed Allan, the king who so feelingly wrote the epitaph of the saintly
virgin Samtain, needed an epitaph himself four years later, for he fell
in battle with Domnall son of Murcad son of Diarmaid, who succeeded him
on the throne. It is recorded that, in the following year, the sea cast
ashore a whale under the mountains of Mourne, to the great wonder of
those who dwelt by the hill of Rudraige. Thus do the Chronicles
establish their good faith, by putting on record things trifling or
grave, with equal impartiality.
They were presently to have something more memorable to record than the
loss of a battle or the stranding of a whale. But before we come to this
new chapter in the life of Ireland, let us show the continuity of the
forces we have already depicted. The old tribal turmoil went on
unabated. In 771, the first year of Doncad son of Domnall in the
sovereignty over Ireland, that ruler made a full muster of the Ui-Neill
and marched into Leinster. The Leinstermen moved before the monarch and
his forces, until they arrived at the fort called Nectain's Shield in
Kildare. Domcad with his forces was entrenched at Aillin, whence his
people continued to fire, burn, plunder and devastate the province for
the space of a week, when the Leinstermen at last submitted to his will.
Seventeen years later it is recorded that the church and abbey of
Ardmaca, or, as we may now begin to call it, Armagh, were struck by
lightning, and the night was terrible with thunder, lightning and wind.