The saints of Erin. Legendary history of Ireland...

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?rn, York.

\ LIBRARY OF CONOR!' SS, f

Preface

The study of Irish histoiy finds more votaries now ; the treasures long locked up in manuscript are now beginning to be presented to the reading public ; but a prejudice due to the rationalistic spirit of the last century weighs on the early lives of the Irish saints. Most frequently they are spoken of only with contempt. Moore, in his History of Ireland, made a feeble vindication, sheltering his rashness under the names of a Gibbon and a Montesquieu : the writer of the following pages has done more ; he has drawn from them pictures full of interest and beauty. He views the whole legend as a Christian artist, not as an antiquarian or an historian. The credibility -of accounts does not enter into his sphere; he takes up any that suits the woof of the tapestry which he weaves, and which we trust our readers will find as pleasing as we have done.

In giving it an English dress, the translator has indulged the hope that it may lead to a series of lives of early Irish saints similar to that published a few years since in England, on the English saints. Rashly, perhaps, he is himself engaged on a Life of St. Patrick, which he hopes soon to complete, in spite of the difficulty of obtaining here works on the early church history of Ireland.

4- Preface.

The numerous miracles in the old Lives caused them to lose favor in the last century ; but, as Barneval remarks, the miracles of the Irish saints are not matters of faith ; we may examine and discuss them. Some may be exaggerations, some inventions of local pride ; but it is a most erroneous idea to suppose them unexampled in more ftcent times. So far as my reading has gone, there are few miracles in the lives of the Irish saints more extraordinary than those of St. Vincent Ferrier, St. Philip Neri, St. Francis of Hieronymo, Blessed Peter Claver, Blessed Sebastian de la Aparicion, or many others, whose biographies may be found in the series of Lives of Modern Saints.

If our ancestors, prior to the last century, erred by their credulity, those of the last most surely did by their incredulity ; and what picture can be more false than Lives of thaumaturgi Kke St. Patrick and St. Bridget, — and thaumaturgi they were by the unanimous voice of history, — when those Lives record not a single miracle?

The result of this incredulous tone, this sneering at miracles, had been highly detrimental to Catholic piety. We boast of our early saints, we glory in them ; but rarely, most rarely, do we invoke them, or solicit the favors of Heaven through their hands.

With these few remarks on the early Lives from which Barneval drew his pages, we commend his book, as a most graceful and interesting picture of early Christianity in Ireland. His rich, exuberant style, his cultivated imagination, and graceful narrative, give a charm to the pictures which he presents — pictures which will be new to many ; which will soon be, let us hope, familiar to most.

John Gilmary Shea.

New York, August 1, 1857.

TABLE OF CHAPTERS.

Chapter Page

To THE Readeb. ...... 7

I. — Greek and Roman Traditions as to Ireland. . 13

II. — Irish Traditions befoue Christianity. . . 17

III. — Christianity in Ireland before St. Patrick. . 22

V. — St. Patrick's Companions. .... 40

VI. — The Saints and the Princes. . . . .45

VII. — The Saints and the People. ... 61

VIII. — St. Bridget. ...... 67

IX. — The Saints and the "Women. . . .74

X. — The Saints and the "Women ^- (Continued.) . 80

XI. — General State of Manners in Ireland, and the

Influence of the Saints. ... 87

XII. — The Irish Church after St. Patrick. . . 104

XIII. — General View of the Monastic Movement in

Ireland. ...... Ill

XIV. — Enda and Fanchea 123

XV. — COLUMBKILL 128

XVI. — The Saints and the Poets. . . . .138

XVII. — Prophecies and Visions. .... 145

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# 6 Table OF Chapters.

Chapter Page

XIX. — Labors of the Church. — Studies in Ireland. . 173

XX. — Exterior Movement. — Travellers. . . 186

XXI. — The Pilgrims. — The Story of Arculphus. . .192

XXII. — The Pilgrims : An Irish Account. . . 199

XXIII. — St. Brendan's Voyage. . . . .210

XXIV. -— Strangers in Ireland. . . . . 225 XXV. •— Irish Masters abroad. .... 232

XXVI. — St. Columban. . . . . .246

XXVII. — The Irish Missionaries. . . . .^69

XXVIII. — ■ The Irish Legend abroad. . . .285

XXIX. — Observation on the Irish Legend. . . . 298

TO THE HEADER

These pages do not deserve a preface, and I am not called upon to rewrite my book here. Moreover, these pages are not properly a book, and I hesitate to offer them to the public. It is neither literature nor history, neither erudition nor philosophy ; it is simply the reading of an ignorant and curious student ; it is, if you will, an abridgment of the Irish legend.

Of late, the word legend has come in vogue, and is used for every thing. In the Catholic sense, the legend is the Lives of the Saints. The story of Roland and Arthur is no more a legend than that of (Edipus; Achilles, or ^neas. Our subject then is the saints of Ireland.

The lives of the saints have long been favorite reading. For fifteen centuries it was Christian and popular ; it took the place of the Bible ; it dispensed with theology and sermons ; children, women, men, sought in the practices of the saints the ideal of good and the lesson of duty. In our days it has become profane and learned ; it forms a complement to annals and chronicles, and historians find in it materials to restore the past, with its monuments and personages.

But books — some books especially — resemble those paintings which may be regarded under different aspects, and which, in each point of view, show different objects. In these edifying and instructive histories there is something besides morals and history.

The monks who wrote them sought to edify and to instruct. Had they no other object? One thing is certain ; the miraculous, the romantic, the poetic, enter largely into their narrative. Faith and imagination, moreover, scarcely go without each other : the imagination relies on faith, and faith solicits the imagination.

This poetic, marvellous, and half literary element rendered these narratives popular. In the seventeenth century, when reason became severe, when, even in the bosom of Catholicity, the worship of reason was inaugurated, men attacked the Legend. The Bollandists soon criticised it, and the Benedictines expurgated it. It scandalized the incredulous a little less, perhaps ; perhaps, too, it 'edified the faithful less. What the learned ridicule or proscribe, what the erudite neglect or despise, what even litterateurs disdain, is precisely what I have sought in preference.

I shall not speak of the charm which I have found in the company of the saints, the graces which I have found in the virgins of Ireland. The public is so used to this kind of confidence, that it guesses it in a moment. There is almost always an intercourse, shorter or longer, between an author and his personages — a connection more or less intimate, a sympathy more or less impassioned ; and the book is very often only the unstudied avowal, the indiscreet revelation, of this attachment. In this affection there is at times much illusion, and to betray the attachment is not to inspire others with it. Each reader has his predilections, and it is idle to expect him to embrace all that is proposed or relish all that is offered.

The personages whom we are about to see do not doubt as to their slight chance of success ; they dare not hope to succeed in the world on which they venture. They are, take it all in all, beings of another world, and their ordinary place is in martyrologies and the margin of missals. They doubtless desire to be agreeable, but they cannot dispense with being edifying ; they are above all saints, and many bear an austere countenance. Nevertheless, let us add, that their history may give, besides a poetic charm and a religious attractiveness, another interest still ; they mingle in grave events ; their lives are complicated with serious questions. The miraculous account sometimes conceals an historic sense ; instructive and curious facts are recognized under the legendary form, and it is always easy to separate them from the symbol.

In the abridgment of the Irish legend, two short chapters recall some ancient traditions to prelude it. The legend itself is divided into three principal parts : the conversion of Ireland, the life of the Irish church at home, its history abroad. The last two chapters are only an observation, a question suggested by the perusal of the legend.

I have stopped at the time of the crusades. Except a few rare extracts from the compilation of John of Tynemouth, in the fourteenth century, but which bear an air of originality and antiquity, I have employed in the text of the legend only those who, according to the greatest authorities, — the Bollandists, Mabillon, and the Benedictines, Colgan, Usher, Messingham, Ware, <fec., — are certainly or probably anterior to that epoch. Up to this moment, then, I have followed the legend.

In these narratives the legend and history often vary sadly ; at other times they approach ; frequently they are confounded. The reader will doubtless be able to distinguish and recognize each ; it is enough for me to awaken his attention, and at the same time, in the name of these old biographers, to appeal to his good will.

A~ single word, now, in favor of tha author. I have given time and pains to this task ; I have traversed huge works, and read many a long volume ; I have seen much science, and encountered men of vast erudition ; but my writing will not show it. I must then, at least, protest that I have no more pretension to science than the obscurest monk, whose secretary I undertake to be.

Should the volume fall into the hands of the learaed, I humbly beg them to excuse my faults.

A monk of Bobbio said, " I write through obedience, and for fear of being beaten." Few authors have so good an excuse. Yet they may deserve indulgence if they sincerely avow their incompetence ; they will then obtain pardon for their sincerity, nay, for their very incompetence.

I might allege also the personal interest that has led me to the study. " One of the reasons that induce me to write," says Stanihurst to Plunkett, in addressing his work on Ireland to him, " is, that I have the honor of belonging to the Barnwells, whose career in Irish history has always been so honorable ; and for the same reason you will doubtless welcome my book, for you too belong to their family." But this consideration, which holds as good for me as for Stanihurst and Plunkett, may be a matter of indifference to the public. That a family should be exiled from Ireland for its Catholic faith, and fidelity to the sovereign, and that there remains in its descendants, after the lapse of two centuries, love of Ireland in their soul, and in their veins something of Irish blood and instinct, is perfectly natural. To enter into these family feelings and sympathies of origin, it is not enough to understand them. My readers must become, as they read, Irish in imagination and heart. This, talent alone in the author can effect, and I do not pretend to have succeeded.

But the traditions of the Irish legend have, it seems to me, an interest and a charm in themselves which cannot entirely disappear in the clumsiest hand. There will remain enough, I hope, in my narrative, to make the work 'and its author find favor in the eyes of the public.

LEGENDARY HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Chapter I. Geeek And Roman Traditions As To Ireland

The Romans met the Scots in Britain. Long before they had planted stable colonies in the northern cantons, the warriors of the great isle of the west, crossing the sea in their hide-bound osier barks, had constantly ravaged the British provinces, and more than once the legions had to drive them from the province which they came to protect.* Agricola even seems to have thought, for a moment, of crossing the Irish Sea ; and his troops deployed along the shore in a menacing attitude. But Agricola was recalled. The Romans remained on the defensive ; the Scots of Erin, in spite of bloody lessons, returned more than once. When they met the legions, lerne indeed " mourned her piles of children slain ; " f but the Roman foot never pressed the green soil of the sacred isle.

The Romans, then, never saw Ireland : nor did the Greeks know it better. The merchants who had traded

* Tacitus, Agricola, 24. f Claudian, De IV. Cons. Honorii.

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in these parts, the lieutenants or prsetors who had commanded in the vicinity, doubtless carried back more accurate notions ; but on reading most authors, it would seem that Ulysses and Homer alone had known these distant regions. Hear Avienus ! " The Sea of the (Estrymnides is a strange sea, with shallow waters, thick, and heavy waves, through which sea monsters crawl ; not a breath there fills the sail of the ship imprisoned in the tall sea plants."* It is the extremity of the world and the Sea of the Cimmerians.

Demetrius relates that this sea is studded with countless desert islands, devoted to the divinity and heroes.f He wished to visit one. Scarcely had he touched the shore when the air was troubled ; the winds, the tempest, broke loose with fearful prodigies ; globes of fires traversed earth and air. They were, he was told, signs which announced the death of a being superior to humanity. Not far off, on another isle, adds Demetrius, Saturn was held captive in the custody of Briareus. Was it not in Caledonia, say some, was it not in Ireland, say others, that Ulysses evoked the shades ? Was not this attested by an inscription engraven on the rocks ? :|:

So when, in the fifth century, Alecto, for the last time, perhaps, left the shades of Tenarus,§ it was there that the subterranean way opened that brought her to the light.

Seven hundred years after, when a Greek, a grammarian of Constantinople, turned his eyes to the misty horizon of the north-west, he seemed still to see the bark of Ulysses, and the shady realm of the dead.

* Ora maritima, 120. % Solinus, c. 25.

" Thither," he says, " go the souls of the dead. Opposite Britain, the shores of the ocean are inhabited by a nation of fishermen subject to the Franks. They pay no tribute, but they transport the souls of the dead. While asleep in their houses at night, they hear a noise at the door ; a voice calls them to work. They arise, go to the shore, ignorant what power they obey ; they find barks prepared, but not their own. They set out ; no one is with them, yet the bark is heavy. They reached the Isle of Britain ; in an instant a long day's voyage is made. They see no one disembark, but they hear voices ; the invisible passengers are welcomed, called by name, addressed as father, mother, or called from their trade. Then the fishermen return, and on their homeward way their lightened barks fly still more rapidly." ^

Yet Ireland lost little on being left enveloped in the fantastic clouds of Homeric poesy. If then, as now,t she shone like an emerald amid the ocean, — if her dense forests and rich fields, in default of birds and bees, fed countless herds of fattened kine, — her people were fierce, rude, and savage. " They are a harsh race," says Solinus ; " they drink the blood of the conquered ; they stain their faces with it. When a male child comes into the world, it is on the point of a sword that the mother offers it its first food ; and the first hope of a mother's heart, the first prayer of a mother's lips, is, that her child may die in battle, amid the clash of arms. No virtue, no moral law, exists ; justice and injustice are not distinguishable."

Yet Solinus does not say all ; for Pomponius Mela,

Strabo, St. Jerome, believed them cannibals. But Solinus may have been misinformed ; and the idea formed of the Scots does not correspond with what the Irish relate of their ancestors. If we are to believe their most authentic historians * the Scoto-Milesians were barbarous-only to their enemies, and the interior of the island would have presented to a peaceful and thoughtful traveller the spectacle of a regular, enlightened, powerful, happy, warlike, and hospitable society.

Yet it is not our task to give either the satire or the apology of ancient Ireland, nor its history. We are not to reproduce or correct, with Keating, the story of the bards and the annals of the assemblies of Teamor. We will listen to the monastic biographers or chroniclers ; we wish to know what they relate ; we will listen to them, for the traditions and testimony of antiquity have been but a preamble to their story.

♦ McGeoghegan, History of Ireland.

Chapter II

lEISH TRADITIONS BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.

Patrick * one day, in the country of Dicfil, came to a tomb of wonderful width and prodigious length. His disciples and all who followed him stopped ; the tomb was measured ; it was thirty feet long. " Must we believe," they asked, " that there were ever men so large ? " " If you choose," replied Patrick, " we shall see." And as they expressed a great desire, the apostle struck with his staff the head of the tomb, tra,ced the sign of the cross, and the sepulchre opened. And the man who slept there, arising in his gigantic stature, exclaimed to Patrick, " I thank thee, good and holy man, for thou hast for a moment suspended my evils and my sorrows." At the same time he shed bitter tears. " May I not go with you ? " said he. " No," said the saint ; " thy aspect would strike too great terror in man. Rather, believe in the God of heaven, receive the baptism of the Lord, and return to thy grave." Patrick pronounced the sacred words of the Pater and the Creed ; the man repeated them after him ; in the name of the Trinity he was thrice plunged into a deep water ; and then, with a soul full of joy, he lay down in his tomb, and reposed in peace.

Such were the first inhabitants of Ireland and the neighboring countries ; for we find them too in Ar-

* Elvod. Probus, Vita Patriciic

2* morica ; and the country of Memthor, where St. Patrick was born, had once been inhabited by them.* Whence came they ? What mighty ships had borne them to these lands ? Had they marched in the sea like the giant of Sicily ? Did they spring from the earth like the race whose history the ancient Greeks relate? Or were they, perchance, an antediluvian relic, a tribe that escaped the deluge. We might think so ; for the sons of Noe, the hardy and rapid voyagers, hastened in vain ; they came after them. A struggle ensued ; but the new race of Japhet ever triumphed. Such was the result in Ireland. Only one of the giants escaped,! according to some accounts ; he was to await the coming of St. Patrick, and receive baptism from him. He it was, who, sole faithful witness of ancient deeds and past generations, taught the holy apostle the whole history of ancient Ireland.

The Irish soil seemed, moreover, to repulse the human race.J Thrice, so to say, it devoured its inhabitants ;§ three emigrations perished there ; and the last comers, the Heberians, who were to remain as masters, well nigh disappeared.

A year had passed since the Heberians landed on the shores of the island, to which they had given a name destined to recall their Iberian fatherland ; when, lo, they behold something like a tower rising amidst the sea ; it was transparent as crystal, and on its battlements armed warriors kept the watch. The Heberians .addressed them ; but the strangers, motionless, answered not. The Heberians at once launched their barks, and

* Elvod. Probus, Vita Patricii.

t Giraldus Cambrensis, Topog. Hiberniae.

X Nennius, § 13. § Giraldus Cambrensis.

assailed the enemy in his fortress. It crumbled on them, and the sea ingulfed them. Thirty vessels had borne them from Heberia ; all, men and women, had rushed on the vessels to meet the enemy ; one had happily been driven on the shore, and its crew, left on land, survived the disaster which they had witnessed."^

We find elsewhere that Ireland was not defended by giants merely ; another race, another power, was established there — the magical power, the race of enchanter.^.. The giants annihilated, magic remained ; it persisted under various names and various forms, and we find it throughout the history of Christian Ireland.

Early, doubtless, and as soon as the Irish had allowed their primitive knowledge of the true God to be obscured, magic contracted its ordinary union with the false religion. And had not, too, their ancestors inhabited Egypt, that great school of occult science and symbolical idolatry? The country was filled at the same time with idols and prodigies.

At Magh-Sleacht,t Crom-Cruach was adored ; atYisneach and at Tlachtgha twice a year the sacred fire was kindled in honor of Baal. St. Patrick found King Laogaire adoring Kean-Croithi,:f the chief of the gods. At Clogher, an inspired stone gave forth oracles, and had been overlaid with gold by a grateful people. The Lia Fail, or stone of destiny, figured in the consecration of kings, and emitted prophetic sounds when it served as their throne on the day of the coronation.

There was a fountain § in Momonia (Munster) which no hand could touch, no eye could see, without Heaven's

* Nennius.

t "Ware, De Hiberni Antiquit. (Annals, 4 Mag. A. M. 3656.)

X Jocelyn, Vita Patricii, cap. 56. § Geraldus Cambrensis.

pouring down on the whole province torrents that would overwhelm it. Elsewhere a fantastic island alarmed the neighboring countries by its sudden appearance and disappearance ; to render it stationary, red hot arrows had to be hurled into its bosom ; for an old man had taught that fire is the enemy of enchantment, and destroys the work of magic.

Such were the powers that manifested themselves in Ireland, and* the mysteries into which the Druids initiated their pupils. It was thus that Lugaicmail struggled for three days with prodigies, against St. Patrick ; * that Caplis and Caplid for three days prevented the sun from shining on Irish earth ; how Broichan let loose the winds and aroused the waves to stop the apostle of the Picts.f

Such was pagan Ireland. But we must say that the authors whom we follow have given us very incomplete ideas as to this subject. This perhaps is due to two causes.

In the first place, Christianity introduced a new language and a new alphabet. If the Latin did not consign the Gaelic to oblivion, if Roman letters did not prevent the use of a more or less national alphabet, it caused its neglect, and in all probability proscribed the sacred druidical writing, the ogham, with its simple, abrupt, and bristling lines, by which, in the remotest times, the Druids and bards had preserved and transmitted some of the knowledge of which they were the guardians. Long after were they doubtless read, long employed ; and the parchment read | by Ware, had not, we are to believe, been written before the Christian

* Elv. Probus. Jocelyn, Vita Patricii. f Adamnan, Vita Columbkill. X De Hibem. Autiquitat. p. 11.

epoch. But the ogham was at last to disappear, and at the same time, and with it, were in a great measure effaced the reminiscences of Irish antiquity.

Again, — and this is more important, — Christianity brought to Ireland the germ of new ideas, new traditions, . new legends. They mingled with * or replaced the old. This operation of superposition, or amalgam, may be observed in the question of origin, and be easily followed. The work of Nennius went through the hands of three authors, each contributing his own part ; the national tradition, the Roman tradition, and the biblical tradition, are frequently confronted, and the falsifier is so simple, the falsification so naive, that nothing is more easy than to separate the three texts, and distinguish the three histories. But it is not so always, and in the poetic and legendary part it is sometimes difi&cult to discern with certainty pagan antiquity and mediaeval Christianity, the marvels of the magicians, and the marvels of the monks.

* The incident which opens the chapter is an example.