LATIN HYMNS OF THE CELTIC CHURCH.
The following entry among the Irish Charters in the famous Book of
Kells illustrates the fate of much of our ancient Celtic literature,
especially in Scotland: “Anno Domini m^o ui^o (_alias_ 1007).
Soiscela mor coluim cille do dubguit is ind aidci as ind iardom
iartarach in daimliacc moir cenannsa,” &c. A.D. 1006 (_alias_
1007)—The great Gospel of Calum-cille was sacrilegiously stolen at
night out of the western portions of the great church of Kells.
This was the chief relic of the west of the world on account of
the singular cover. This Gospel was found in twenty nights and two
months, with its gold stolen off, and a sod over it. Thus the “great
gospel” of Columba was preserved from destruction by the merest
accident. But cupidity has not been the only foe that the Celt’s
ancient manuscript literature has had to contend with. The ignorance
and indifference of many into whose hands it fell have also played
their part;—a tailor was seen last century in the Hebrides cutting
down Gaelic manuscripts for patterns. More fatal than ignorance has
been the active depreciation of a hostile church operating on the
animosity of a rival race. It is only now—a thousand years after
the era of the ancient Celtic Church—that scholars and unprejudiced
historians have succeeded in showing us a little of it. The “sod over
it” has been partly removed; and the “find” has not been altogether
uninteresting, although the “gold” has been “stolen off.” Zeuss has
furnished us with materials for the reconstruction of the ancient
Celtic language; Skene and others have given us some account of the
early Iro-British Church; but Church history has not fully examined
the available existing material that would show us the character of
the Christian life and devotion of our early Christian ancestors in
these islands. It is proposed in the following chapter to glance at
the Latin Hymns of the ancient Celtic Church in order to realise to
ourselves a little of the inner life of those early evangelists to
whose extraordinary labours and unwearied zeal we are indebted for
the conversion of our forefathers from heathenism. In these hymns
we have relics of that early religious literature which helped to
give Christian comfort to generations of lonely labourers on isle
and mainland. Here we have transmitted to us something of the loving
heavenly motives, the Gospel inspiration, by whose persuasive force
the strongholds of pagan darkness were pulled down throughout the
British islands, as well as in many districts on the Continent.
These devotional compositions were the common property of the whole
Celtic Church at home and abroad. It is intended to look at them here
as remains of the use and wont which prevailed during the “golden
age” of this early Free Church, as it existed in Scotland. In doing
so, it may deepen our interest in them if we briefly recall the
historical setting and political surroundings in which the great work
of this Church was accomplished.
In order to reach the heart of this Church, we must pierce through
that belt of ecclesiastical and religious darkness which Papal Rome
wove round the body of our national life during the four centuries
which preceded the Reformation. Beyond these centuries we are enabled
at once to grasp that one outstanding fact in our early annals, that
from the days of Ninyas, in the beginning of the fifth century, to
the accession of the “Sair Saint,” King David, in 1124 a Free Church,
comparatively evangelical and aggressive, existed in Scotland for a
period of 700 years. No definite attempt has been made to show the
full national significance of this fact. If we contrast that period
of 700 years with the following period of similar length, we find
that during the first half of the latter, decay and death prevailed;
and that even during the second half, with all the advantages
attendant on post-Reformation times, large tracts of our country,
once aglow with gospel life, remained practically heathen until the
lost ground began to be reconquered and reclaimed by the modern Free
Church of Scotland. In all this there is much to humble, instruct
and encourage us. We learn that the essential power of the gospel is
the same in all ages, and that similar results follow the earnest
proclamation of truth in ancient and modern times. The Christian
men that in early days made the gospel a living converting power
throughout our whole land, even in every village of the Highlands,
and every islet of the Hebrides, could not have been very unlike
their countrymen of the present day, among whom evangelical truth is
preserved and preached.
A glance at the early history of Ireland reveals the fact that a
similar course of things took place there. Pope Adrian IV., known
to England as Nicolas Breakspere, the only Englishman who ever sat
in the chair of St. Peter, issued a bill in 1155, giving the kingdom
of Ireland to Henry II. of England. This is a remarkable fact, and
deeply suggestive in connection with the reasons assigned for its
accomplishment. The Irish had all along been Protestants against Rome
and her rule. The Pope, who like all the bishops of that holy ilk,
claimed the right to dispose of all Christian lands, finding that
the Irish, according to Roman estimate, were “Schismatics” and “bad
Christians,” like their brethren of the same period in Scotland, made
a present of the island to Henry, in order to make good Catholics
of the inhabitants. Here were two Englishmen engaged in perverting,
or rather completing the perversion of the Free Independent Church
of Ireland to Rome. Hence all the tears of Ireland, England’s great
responsibility, much bloodguiltiness on all sides, the almost utter
futility of all attempts to restore to that much-enduring isle, the
comparatively pure faith of its ancient days. O’Driscol, an honest
Roman Catholic writer, describes the change as follows:—“There is
something very singular in the ecclesiastical history of Ireland.
The Christian Church of that country, as founded by St. Patrick and
his predecessors, existed for many ages free and unshackled. ‘For
above 700 years this Church maintained its independence.’ It had no
connection with England, and differed upon points of importance with
Rome. The work of Henry II. was to reduce the Church of Ireland into
obedience to the Roman Pontiff. Accordingly, he procured a Council
of the Irish clergy, to be held at Cashel in 1172, and the combined
influence and intrigues of Henry and the Pope prevailed. This Council
put an end to the ancient Church of Ireland, and submitted it to
the yoke of Rome. ‘That apostacy has been followed by a series of
calamities, hardly to be equalled in the world.’ From the days of St.
Patrick to the Council of Cashel was a bright and glorious era for
Ireland. From the sitting of this Council to our time, the lot of
Ireland has been unmixed evil, and all her history a tale of woe.”
The influence of Rome on the heart of the Scottish nation, began with
the marriage of Malcolm with the English Roman Catholic Princess
Margaret. This Saxon queen completed the outward perversion of
Scotland to Rome. She pretended to reform, but only managed to
enthral the native Church, whose clergy she summoned to a Council
in 1074. The Gaelic language was the only language the clergy could
speak—they had a professional knowledge of Latin—so King Malcolm,
her husband, acted as her interpreter. They refused to recognise
the absolute supremacy of the great Roman father; they were unable
to speak English; and the queen set herself piously to rectify
these abuses and shortcomings. The Roman Catholic influence of the
Norman went on increasing until the Court, as the Celtic Professor
at Oxford says, “in the time of David, who began to reign in 1124,
after being educated in England in all the ways of the Normans, was
filled with his Anglican and Norman vassals. He is accordingly,
regarded as the first wholly feudal King of Scotland, and the growth
of feudalism went on at the expense of the power and influence of
the Celtic princes, who saw themselves snubbed and crowded out to
make room for the king’s barons, who had grants made to them of land
here and there, wherever it was worth having. The outcome was a deep
seated discontent, which every now and then burst into a flame of
open revolt on the part of the rightful owners of the soil.” The
Celtic Church died away with the decay of the power of the Celtic
princes. At the same time the Roman religion was warmly supported in
the persons of Englishmen, Flemings and Normans, who received every
encouragement to settle in Scotland. The predominance of the Celtic
element seems to have passed away in the eleventh century. “At the
time, however, of the War of Independence, Gaelic appears to have
still reached down to Stirling and Perth, to the Ochil and Sidlaw
Hill, while north of the Tay it had as yet yielded to English or
Broad Scotch, only a very narrow strip along the coast.” The bulk
of Bruce’s army at Bannockburn was composed of the Ivernian and
Celtic descendants of the ancient Free Church of Scotland. The true
Christian devotion of the Fathers had not altogether disappeared:
like the Puritan soldiers of Cromwell these grand old Scots began
the grim work of battle for national freedom, with a fervent prayer
to the God of battles,—a species of homage which surprised the more
Catholic English.
The Latin hymns of this ancient Church will be found in the “Leabhar
imuin” (Book of Hymns) and the Bangor Antiphonary, both miscellanies
of odes, canticles, blessings, prayers, &c. Altogether the number
is upwards of thirty. The “Leabhar imuin” is a MS. of the ninth
or tenth century in Trinity College Library, Dublin, of which two
thirds have been printed. The first part, edited by the late Dr
Todd, appeared in 1855, and contained the following four hymns, with
extensive annotations from the “Leabhar Breac,” &c.:—1, The Hymn
of St. Sechnall in praise of St. Patrick; 2, The Hymn of St. Ultán
in praise of St. Brigit; 3, The Hymn of Cummain Fota in praise of
the Apostles; 4, The Hymn of St. Mugint. These are specimens of the
terminology of the hymn titles.
The Bangor Antiphonary is a MS. in the Ambrosian Library, Milan.
It was written between 680 and 691; and was printed by Muratori in
1713. Some of the pieces in this MS. have a historical, as well as a
devotional value, such as “The Versicles of the Family of Benchor,”
and “The Commemoration of our Abbots,” in which the names of fifteen
abbots of the Bangor (County Down) monastery are given in the same
order in which their obits occur in the annals. Dr Reeves speaks
well of its accuracy, considering that the MS. has been some 1200
years absent from Ireland. These are the sources in which this Latin
hymnology of the ancient Gaels will be found. They are not very
accessible. As already remarked, versions of them will be also found
in the “Leabhar Breac;” some of them were printed by Sir James Ware,
in the appendix to his “Opuscula S. Patricii;” while the Isidore
Codex of the “Leabhar imuin” recently brought from Rome to Dublin,
has never yet been printed. These MSS., written in a peculiar ornate
style, have become known to archæologists under the description
“libri Scottice Scripti,” (books written in Scotch).
Some of these devotional compositions are as old as the fourth
century, such as the “Hymnum dicat” ascribed to Hilary, and the
“Mediæ noctis,” ascribed to the famous Ambrose of Milan. The
“Audite Omnes” was composed by Sechnall, the nephew of Patrick,
towards the close of the fifth century, in praise of the Irish
apostle. This piece, rather a poem than a hymn, bears to have been
written “in Domhnach Sechnaill,” (now Dunshaughlin in Meath), by
the St. Sechnall, or Secundinus, who was a son of Patrick’s sister,
“by her husband _Restitutus_” of the “Longobards of Leatha.” The
superscription reminds us of the fact that the Scots and the Gaidels
were the same people, whether found in Ireland or parts of Britain.
It runs thus: “Incipit Ymnus sancti Patricii episcopi Scotorum.”
(“The hymn beginning, St. Patrick, Bishop of the Scots.”) The
following note on it occurs in the “Leabhar Breac”: “Tempus autem.”
(“But the time”);—viz: “when Leogaire, son of Niall, was King of
Eirinn came to praise Patrick. Sechnall said to Patrick, ‘When shall
I make a hymn of praise for thee?’ Patrick said, ‘I desire not to be
so praised during my life.’ Sechnall answered, ‘Non interrogavi utrum
faciam, sed quando faciam.’ (‘I did not ask whether I should do it,
but when’). Patrick said, ‘Si facias venit tempus.’ (‘If you do it,
the time has come’)—i.e. because Patrick knew that the time of his
(Sechnall’s) death was at hand.” In the third verse we have the old
Scottic interpretation of the famous passage in Matthew on which St.
Peter’s chair is founded:—
“Constans in Dei timore
Et fide immobilis
Super quem aedificatur
Ut Petrum Ecclesia.”
“Constant in the fear of God, and immovable in faith, upon him as
upon a Peter is built a Church.”
The student of these ancient writings is surprised to find the
modern Irish persist in making Patrick a Frenchman. In the “Leabhar
Breac” the following note, as decisive of his nationality, occurs in
connection with this hymn. “Patraic umorro do bretnaibh h ercluaide
a bunadus.” “Now Patrick in his origin was of the Britons of
Er-Cluaide”—i.e. of the Strathclyde Britons, among whom his name has
found its topographical monument in Kilpatrick, as already pointed
out.
The ancient Christian Scots had their own saints, to whom they were
naturally attached as the fathers of their Church. The names of
Patrick, Columba, and others, as well as of Brigit constantly occur
in these Latin Hymns. Brigit comes next in importance to Patrick in
Hibernian hagiology. Ultán’s hymn in praise of her begins with these
words, “Christus in nostra insola que uscatur hibernia;” and towards
the end, the “angelic and most holy Brigit” in all her wondrous works
of power, is spoken of as “like unto the holy Mary.” We have only
fragments of this poem. It appears to have been originally composed,
like Sechnall’s and several others in these MSS., in the A B C style,
with a stanza for each letter of the alphabet. There is another
found in the beginning of an old Celtic copy of the Greek Psalter,
in praise of Brigit, whose feast day is also celebrated in another,
“Phœbi diem.” The feast day of Patrick has also its celebration hymn,
beginning thus: “Lo, the solemn feast day of Patrick is shining most
brightly.”
The hymn “In Te Christe” is one of the three attributed to Columba,
and bears in some places the stamp of his majestic spirit. The
“Ignis Creator igneus” starts with the conception of the Paschal
candle, and proceeds to describe the columns of smoke and flame
which guided Israel out of Egypt. A few of the metrical compositions
in the Bangor Antiphonary have a more local and historical than a
devotional interest, such as the “Good Rule of Bangor,” and the
commemoration of the abbots of that place, already referred to. The
name of Comgall, the head of the monastery, who died in 602, occurs,
as also Molaisran, or Molio of the Holy Isle, Arran, who died in 639.
There is an evening hymn beginning with “Christe qui Lux es” and a
Pentecostal one about the Apostles, with the initial words “Christi,
Patris in dextera.” There is one hymn, and only one, in the group in
praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Cantemus in omni die.”
Metrical translations of seven, in whole or in part, of these hymns
are given here, to indicate the general character of the devotional
portions of the group. The one beginning with the words: “Precamur
Patrem” has not had any date assigned it, but judging by internal
evidence, it appears to belong to the era of Patrick. It contains
one hundred and sixty-eight lines; starting with an address to the
Lord’s Day, it proceeds to give an abstract of the life of Christ. A
comparison made between the beginning of the physical and that of the
spiritual creation, is worked out in somewhat original fashion. In
the following verses the Lord and His Own Day are contrasted as the
first-born children of light:
PRECAMUR PATREM.
We worship Thee, Almighty King:
To God the Father praise we bring;
To Jesus, Saviour of the lost;
And to the Blessed Holy Ghost.
Thou art, O God, our life and might;
The source of all the worlds of light,
Which on the brows of heaven lie,
And make resplendent earth and sky.
Of old this day was earth’s first-born;
It shone from heaven a holy morn:
Even so the Word, Eternal Light,
The Father gave this world of night.
That day the chaos dark destroyed;
Dispelling night into the void:
So Victor o’er the foe did He
This world from death’s fierce fetters free.
Upon the deep thick darkness lay
Before the dawning of that day;
So ignorance the heart enwound
Till Jesus shed His light around.
A remarkable composition, probably belonging to the same period, and
intended to be used on the birthdays of the martyrs has, like a few
others, the refrain “Alleluia” introduced after every verse. The term
“birthday” does not bear here its ordinary meaning, but birth by
temporal death into a higher life. This hymn is regarded as one of
the best productions of the Latino-Celtic muse:
SACRATISSIMI MARTYRES.
Martyrs of the God Most High,
Who for Christ did bravely die;
Leaders on the heavenly road;
Victors, sing with saints to God,—
Alleluia!
Christ exalted! Cherubim
Render homage unto Him,
On the Father’s throne on high,
While the saints with martyrs cry,—
Alleluia!
Glorious One! The first to bear
Shame upon the Cross, our share;
In thy triumph blessings came;
Now the martyr saints proclaim,—
Alleluia!
The Apostles, strong in faith,
Suffered on the Cross to death;
Shielded now, and saved by grace,
Chant within Thy holy place,—
Alleluia!
Christ! the Helper of the saints,
Heard their weary hearts’ complaints;
Now these martyrs praises bring
And rehearse before their King,—
Alleluia!
Praised, O Lord, Thy power be,
Which obtains the victory;
Crushes Satan by the way
While the saints with martyrs say,—
Alleluia!
God’s strong hand will be their shield;
With His grace their hearts are steeled
To resist the enemy’s ways,
While with saints they ever raise,—
Alleluia!
Heirs with Christ! Their crowns behold!
Filled with fruit a hundred-fold;
Pains are past; they now rejoice,
Uttering in thankful voice,—
Alleluia!
Let us humbly pray for grace,
Till we see the Father’s face
In Jerusalem on high
Where we raise with saints the cry,—
Alleluia!
Another very ancient hymn is the “Spiritus Divinae,” which is one of
the matins used for the Lord’s Day:
SPIRITUS DIVINAE.
O glorious Spirit of the Light Divine;
Come, favour me;
Thou, God of Truth, in Israel once didst shine;
Lord, look on me;
Thou, Saviour, Son, and Light of Light, I know:
Shed forth Thy living lustre on my woe.
Thy Spirit is one substance with the Son,
Lord, look on me;
Thou, Christ, the only first-begotten One,
Wilt look on me;
I have redemption from my sin in Thee:
I seek Thy pardoning aid—Lord, look on me.
Born of the Virgin that poor men might live;
Lord, look on me;
The rights of sonship, Thou alone canst give;
Lord, look on me;
Joint-heir with Thee, Creator of all things:
God-Jesus, everlasting King of Kings.
King of the everlasting ages, Light of God,
Illumine me;
Out of thy boundless fitness shed abroad
Thy love in me;
Father, and Son, and Spirit, One in Three,
In power and substance One, Lord look on me.
The hymn “Sancti Venite” was intended for communion service. Dr
Neale has rendered it into English. A legend relates how Patrick and
his nephew Sechnall heard a company of angels once rehearsing it;
and declares, “So that from that time to the present, that hymn is
chanted in Eirinn when the body of Christ is received”:—
SANCTI VENITE.
Take the blessed Bread and Wine,
Emblems of that Life Divine,
That for sin has been out-poured,
By our sacrificing Lord:
Blessed Jesus crucified,
Life flows from Thy bleeding side.
He renews us by his grace:
Let us give to God the praise:
He has died the lost to save,
Risen Victor o’er the grave:
Giver of salvation He;
Let His Cross our burden be.
He, the Father’s suffering Son,
Priest and Victim all in one,
Has become the Lamb of God
To remove our guilty load:
Saviour, Giver of all light;
He will lead by day and night.
With pure minds let us draw near,
And discern the Shepherd here;
For the hungry, bread He brings,
Water from the living springs;
In our hearts He lives enshrined
Lord and Judge of all mankind.
The Spirit of Gildas, the Welsh monk, who was born in 520, and who
pronounced bitter jeremiads on the princes of his own race and
time, is clearly traceable in the next hymn, of whose prologue
a translation is given. He is one of the Romish corrupters of
the native Church. His “Suffragare” is one of the “Loricae”
breast-plates, used to protect those who rehearsed them against evil:—
SUFFRAGARE.
O Unity in Trinity!
Help, for in Thee I live,
O Trinity in Unity!
My sins forgive:
Exposed, I need Thy help and sympathy,
Like one in peril of the mighty sea!
Thou wilt preserve me by Thy power
From all my raging foes;
Thy heavenly host in danger’s hour,
Before me goes;
Cherubic and seraphic ranks in might,
Far scattering the forces of my night.
I see the Patriarchs of eld,
The Prophets bold and strong;
Apostles who the Lord beheld,
The Martyrs’ throng;
All faithful witnesses, who hence have gone;
I gaze, and pause afresh to reach the throne.
O Unity in Trinity!
In mercy grant Thine aid;
O Trinity in Unity!
I seek thy shade,
Where Christ has made a covenant sure with me;
Oh, fearless, there let me abide with Thee!
There is a hymn by another author of Welsh extraction, St. Mugint,
in the “Leabhar imuin,” beginning with the words “Parce dne.” The
“Altus” of Columba, who arrived in Scotland from Ireland in 563, is
a production of considerable length and much merit, in the A B C
Darian style. It takes cognisance of the whole sphere of sacred and
Scriptural truths, somewhat in the fashion of the compositions of the
Brytho-Saxon Caedmon, and has been regarded as a highly effective
“Lorica”:—
ALTUS PROSATOR.
Great Father of all, the Almighty, we praise,
The One-unbegotten, the Ancient of Days,
Eternally first, and eternally last!
With Thee there remains neither future nor past.
With Thee co-eternal in glory and might,
Reigns Christ on the throne in the regions of light,
Thine Only-begotten, the Son of Thy love,
And there, too, the Spirit, the heavenly Dove.
Bright myriads of angels a ministrant throng,
Ring praises unceasing, rejoicing in song,
Where crowns are cast down at Immanuel’s feet,
And anthems eternal the elders repeat.
The judgements of heaven shall be scattered abroad
On all who deny that our Saviour is God;
But we shall be raised up with Jesus on high,
To where the new mansions all glorious lie.
There is a Gaelic hymn attributed to Columba, which illustrates the
manner and occasions of using these “Loricae”—in Gaelic _lurech_. Its
superscription runs thus: “Colum cilli cecinit, while passing alone;
and it will be a protection to the person who will repeat it going
on a journey.” The author in the first verse represents himself as
lonely on the hillside, and addressing the royal “Sun.” M’oenuran dam
is in sliabh, &c.:—
“Alone am I in the mountain,
O Royal Sun of prosperous path;
Nothing is to be feared by me,
Not if I were _attended by_ sixty-hundred.”
The _rig-grian_—Sun-king, is applied to the Creator.
The third Latin hymn ascribed to Columba, and beginning with the
words “Noli Pater” is also a “Lorica.” It is connected with the
lighting of fires on St. John’s Eve. In some prefatory remarks, its
virtues are thus described:—“It is sung against every fire and every
thunderstorm, and whosoever sings it at bedtime and at rising, it
protects him against lightning.”
NOLI PATER.
Father, restrain Thy thunder,
Thy lightning from our frame,
Lest in our trembling wonder
They smite us with their flame!
Thou Awful One! we fear Thee,
For there is none like Thee;
In thy dread steps we hear Thee;
And to Thy shelter flee.
To Thee awake loud praises,
One universal song
The great creation raises,
Sung by the angel throng:
Our Jesus, King most loving!
The lofty heavens extol:
We see Thee grandly moving
Where flashing lightnings roll.
O King of kings! Thou reignest
In righteousness and love;
And righteous rule maintainest
From Thy pure throne above.
God’s love—a blessed fuel—
Burns in my heart a flame;
Like to a golden jewel
Preserved in silver flame.
Much is made of the elements in this composition. In the Gaelic one
already referred to, Columba guards in the last verses against any
tendency to Pantheism that might be connected with his expressions.
He declares:—
“I adore not the voice of birds,
Nor the _sreod_, nor a destiny, or the earthly world,
Nor a son, nor chance, nor woman;
My Druid is Christ, the Son of God,—
Christ, the Son of Mary, the Great Abbot,
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
My estates are with the King of kings;
My order is at Cenannus and Moen.”
_Cenannus_ is now Headfort in Meath, where Columba erected a
monastery. _Moen_ is now Moon, in Kildare.
The renderings of hymns given in the preceding paragraphs will convey
some idea of the hymnology of the Gaelic Church. The singing of these
Latin compositions awoke echoes for ages along the glens of Gaelic
Scotland as well as in the forests of Germany; among the Swiss and
Italian Alps, as well as along the sweet hills of Devon and Cornwall.
They indicate a practical literary activity which served well its
generation; and frequently helped to soothe the relentless spirit of
revenge of the Pagan nations of the period.
The primitive Free Church of the Gaels of Britain was an important
branch of this powerful missionary Church of the Celts. Its
operations and results were largely obscured by successors on the
same fields who departed from its methods of work; but recent efforts
of impartial investigators, have helped to assign it its proper
place in the ancient Christianization of Western Europe. It does not
lie within the scope of this work to discuss the character of the
organization of this Church of the Gaels. Indeed the question has
been already so thoroughly investigated by competent pens that it
would be perfectly superfluous to attempt it. To the literary student
this period of church history is chiefly interesting on account of
the fact that it is through the hands of these devoted workers of
those ages that the first fruits of written literature have been
handed down to us. These men being our earliest literary artists, we
naturally turn with perennial interest to the Christian organizations
which some had founded, and in which others were bred.
A small production, some three quarto pages in prose, gives us a
picture of a holy brother who might be expected to cultivate the
virtues of the Gospel in solitude rather than in the circle of
the active community. It is called the “Rule of Calumcille;” and
has been found in the Burgundian Library of Brussells. The Rule
recommends residence close to a church; a fast place with one door;
the company of one attendant only, whose duties must be light; and
access to be granted only to those whose converse will be of God
and His Testament. The time is to be spent in prayers for those
taught and for those dying in the faith. The day is to be divided
into three parts, one for prayers, for good works, and for reading
respectfully. The work is to be divided into three parts; the first
for his own benefit in doing what is needed for his own habitation;
the second for the good of the brethren; and the third for that of
the neighbours. The work of benefiting his neighbours to consist in
giving precepts, writing manuscripts, sewing clothes, or any other
profitable industry. The great end to be obtained is that there “be
no idleness;” “ut Deus ait: non apparebis ante me vacuus.”
This sentiment of “no idleness” is highly creditable to the ancient
Gaelic Christian communities; and if we combine with it another found
in one of the lives of Columba,—
“He drank not ale; he loved not satiety:
He avoided flesh;”
we make a clean discovery which absolutely refutes the unneighbourly
charges of more southern brethren in our own time which associate
Celts, whisky, and idleness too closely and unfairly together.
Our early Highland teachers inculcated industry and sobriety; the
dangerous powers of whisky were unknown to them; and even the lighter
inspirations of ale they eschewed until their own primitive virtues
were undermined by contact with the beer-drinking Pagan Norse on
the one hand, and in later times with the fiercer spirits which
were imported from Teutonic fens on the other. Such are the strange
reversals of popular opinions which accurate study of the facts of
history unfolds. The alleged idleness of the Gael of the present
day, does not appear thus to have any essential connection with the
original sin of the race; the development of the quality appears to
have taken place in contact with a more sluggish and a less lively
people.
In his great work on “English Writers,” Professor Henry Morley
writes:—“When darkness gathered over all the rest of western Europe,
the churches and monasteries of the British island, first among the
Celts and afterwards among the English, supplied, says the Danish
scholar [Professor Sophus Bugge], in and after the seventh century,
the only shelter and home to the higher studies. The British clergy
travelled far in search of books, until in the time of Charlemagne it
was from the Church in Britain that the clearest light shone through
the western world.” The devotional spirit by which these men were
animated, will be fairly illustrated by the renderings of their Latin
Hymns contained in this chapter.
It is freely acknowledged that the ancient Free Church of the Scots,
even in its golden age, held and practised peculiar tenets which in
course of time developed undesirable and even unscriptural fruit.
On the other hand, it must be allowed that it adhered for a long
period to the main doctrines of evangelical Christianity. From the
hymns which we have been considering, and from Patrick’s “Epistle of
Coroticus,” and his “Confession,” in which we have something of the
nature of a creed or a confession of faith, as well as from other
sources, we gather a fair representation of the chief dogmas of its
faith. It held and taught the chief doctrines of the Trinity, of the
incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and of His
coming again at the last day to judge all men; and likewise of the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit to make us sons of God, and heirs of
immortality. It held, moreover, the Holy Scriptures to be the Word
of God, and used them freely and exclusively as the authority by
which all statements of doctrine are to be proved and confirmed. At
the same time the doctrine of human merit, purgatory, saint-worship,
transubstantiation, papal infallibility, and other distinctive tenets
of modern Romanism, find no recognition. While, as we are told by
St. Bernard, its followers “rejected auricular confession as well as
authoritative absolution, and confessed to God alone, believing God
alone could forgive sins,” they would neither give to the Church of
Rome the tenths, nor the first-fruits, which of course rendered them
“schismatics and heretics” at Rome. Marriage was regarded as a civil
rite, and was performed by the magistracy.
The purity of doctrine and generally healthy influence cultivated and
exercised by the ancient Celtic Church, are shown in a remarkable
manner in the products of Celtic art, which attained to its highest
development in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. The
remains of this school of ancient sculpture, if collected into one
national museum, would form an exhibition of native art such as,
according to Mr Joseph Anderson, the Rhind lecturer, no northern
nation can boast of. Respecting these sculptured stones, memorials
that are not unworthy of our valiant Christian ancestors, Burton,
in an interesting chapter, remarks: “It deserves to be commemorated
that in the hundreds of specimens of native sculpture of this class
recently brought to light there is no single instance of indecency,
while in the scanty remains of Roman art within the same area it
would be easy to point out several.”
The character of the two races that blended into one through the
agency of this Church and outward political pressure is not unfairly
represented by Professor Rhys, when he says, touching first on the
Gael or ancient Scot: “One of the lessons of this chapter is that
the Goidel, where he owned a fairly fertile country, as in the
neighbourhood of the Tay, showed that he was not wanting in genius
for political organisation; and the history of the kingdom of
Scotland, as modelled by Kenneth mac Alpin and his descendants, warns
one not to give ear to the spirit of race-weighing and race-damning
criticism that jauntily discovers, in what it fancies the character
of a nation, the reasons why it has not achieved results not fairly
placed within its reach by the accidents either of geography or
history.” The other ancient race of Albin was neither Celtic nor
Aryan in its origin. It has been generally known as Pictish, and
constitutes the backbone of the Scottish nation. Mr Rhys calls it
_Ivernian_. The following sentences state a fact and describe a
process: “The trouble the non-Celtic Picts were able to give the
Romans and the Romanising Brythons has often been dilated upon
by historians, who have seldom dwelt on the much more remarkable
fact, that a power, with its head-quarters in the neighbourhood of
the Ness, had been so organised as to make itself obeyed from the
Orkneys to the Mull of Cantyre, and from Skye to the mouth of the
Tay, so early as the middle of the sixth century. It is important
to bear this in mind in connection with the question as to how far
the earlier Celtic invaders of this country may have mixed with the
ancient inhabitants; since it clearly shows that there was no such a
gulf between them as would make it impossible or even difficult for
them to amalgamate; and it may readily be supposed that the Goidelic
race has been greatly modified in its character by its absorption
of this ancient people of the Atlantic seaboard.” The Latin hymns
considered here are the remains of the devotional literature of these
two races, and bind the history and memories of modern Scotsmen to
the history and memories of a people among whom the fervid national
genius of Scotland was first fashioned.
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