The Irish - The Lost Tribe?

THE IRISH - THE LOST TRIBE?

By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Vos autem genus electum, regale sacerdotium, gens sancta, populus acquisitionis - 1 St Peter, 2:9

A combination of material wealth and religious poverty is invariably followed by on of those immense 

catastrophes, which write themselves forever on the memory of man.  - Donoso Cortez 

MY FAVOURITE NOVEL in Irish is Monsignor Breandán Ó Doibhlin's Néal Maidine agus Tine Oíche.*  The title "Morning Cloud and Night Fire"is based on Exodus 40:36.  In fact the novel closely follows the delivery of the enslaved Hebrews from Egypt andd their subsequent journey town the promised land.  But the book is written about the Irish, and it is made difficult for the average Irish reader by his frequent references to an older form of the Irish tongue.

Mgr Ó  Doibhlin was not the first.  When I read the book for the second time a number of years ago, I wondered how much the author knew about the fascination of the early Irish monks with ancient Israel and also how shocked those monks would be with modern scholarly attitudes.

Biblical influence crucial

The literature of early mediaeval Ireland has to date been analysed in a strictly Aryan construct.  Parallels are forever sought within the overall Indo-European (indo-germanisch) context.  This can be fruitful. For, example, Cormac mac Airt is suckled by a wolf in infancy.  We could safely assume this to be a direct borrowing from the story of Romulus and Remus, were it not for the fact that a similar tale is told of Cyrus the Persian and the same theme emerges in Greek and Germanic lore.  Though valuable, the Indo-European view is not the last word on the matter.

The early Irish monks had little interest in India or Persia.  Their only interest in Germany was to convert the place.  In general, their only interest in an alleged Caucasian heritage was a belief that were are all descended from Noah's son Japheth.  The early Irish monks were more interested in Israel than in India.

Most of the writings now seen as mythological can be read as a retelling of a distinctly Irish folklore, subject to biblical influence.  So the puny Lug Lám Fata slays Balor of the evil eye with a sling shot.

But the monastic scribes went a lot further than that.  Lebor Gabála (The Book of Invasions) describes the primaeval history of Ireland.  It shows the influence of St Isidore of Seville and St Augustine in its view of history.  But it is interesting to see the lengths to which the monks went to parallel the Irish experience with that of the Hebrews.  In ways quite reminiscent of the Boers in South Africa or the Mormons, the first Irish Christians appear to have latched on to the conviction that they were a unique people, to whom God had allotted a special destiny.

Egyptian link

The common ancestor of the Gael was a Scythian.  (Here - and only here - would mediaeval and modern scholar find consensus.)  The lawyer and linguist, Fénius Farsaid, finds his way to Egypt where he founds a school of law.  His son married the Pharaoh's duaghter, that the father names  the language he invents after her son, Góedel, so we have Gaelic.  It is strongly hinted that young Góedel had Moses for a foster brother and Fénius taught both of them law.

Anyway, the time comes when it is now longer politic for Fénius and his kin to remain in Egypt, so they embark on a journey which brings them through the North African desert over 40 years and than through Spain, before they come to rest in Ireland.  Of course, they have to displace the peoples who were there before them, which they have no problem in doing.

 Place of natural law

A nice story, but the monks had to back it up.  They appealed to St Paul, who in Romans 2:14-15, implies a Natural Law written into creation by God.  The Irish were quite diligent in there observance of natural law (recht aicnid), according to the scribes.  Natural law was seen as a very important judicial concept; aand one presumes it remained so until Chief Justice Hamilton enlightened us on the the topic in the judgement on the constitutionality of the Abortion Information Act a few years ago.  Wherever they could point out a coincidence with the Law of Moses (recht litre - written law, they did; the most striking example being in relation to heiresses.

In the fullness of time, the Irish received the Law of Moses and with it, the Prophets and the New Testament.  This would naturally single St Patrick out as somewhat special.  The monks depicted him as a Moses-Elias figure.  Whereas the St Patrick of the Confessio and the Epistola is a simple and zealous missionary (methinks he doth protest too much - both writings are a lot more sophisticated than they appear to the naked eye), the various biographers of the saint give us the picture of either of the greatest figures of the Old Testament.

 Not merely hagiographical

Again and again, incidents are related which are similar to the lives of Moses and Elias.  In his various confrontations with the druids, we see retellings of the stand-off between Moses and Pharoah's magicians or between Elias and the priests of Baal.

It is all too simple to dismiss the Lives of St Patrick in the light of his own literary legacy.  Too simple, and based on an uncritical reading of both.  It should be remembered that St Patrick must have been a very impressive figure to silence the whole court of the High King and pave the way for the Christianisation of the entire country.

One of the Lives contains a very frank details: though the saint makes a great impression of King Lóegaire Ua Néill, the king remains a heathen.  This would hardly appear in a text which was merely hagiographical.

As Moses and Elias (foreshadowing Our Lord) fast 40 days and nights, so does St Patrick.  Finally, as the 12 Apostles are given the authority to judge the 12 Tribes of Israel, (St Matthew 19:28), Muirchú's Life assigns the same task to St Patrick, as he had been an apostle to us.  This is as close as the monks came to claiming status as a lost tribe.

 Judgement for sins

One could go into great detail about other efforts to associate Early Ireland with the peoples of the Old and New Testament, whether in lawa or customs, in origins ( though Japheth was the father of the Europeans, most Irish genealogies were traced through Shem), or personal contact.  (At least one Irish jurist went the wrong way on leaving Egypt and wandered with the Israelites for 40 years, receiving the Law from Moses.  And three Irish nobles were said to have become Christian before St Patrick came - Conchobar mac Nessa and Cormac mac Airt are the best known.)

The matter did not rest there.  At a much later time, during Plantations and Penal Laws, Irish writers and scholars returned to the same theme.  This time the literati were largely in exile on the continent, especially in Louvain.  The Elizabethan and Cromwellian terrors were fresh memories and it seemed one anti-Catholic pogrom followed another.  The writers went back to the Old Testament view of the Babylonian captivity and the conquest of the Promised Land by the Gentiles.  It was the judgement of God on Ireland for the sins of the Irish.

 Slavery and idols

Mgr Ó Doibhlin returns to the same theme this century.  Behind all the allusion to Exodus and Lebor Gabála, despite how archaic and remote all the characters and themes appear, one cannot help but believe he is referring to our own day.  Slavery and idols, though they come in different shapes and sizes, are still present; and little is so destructive as the slavery or seductive comforts, especially after enduring the more obvious slavery for so long.

Ireland has changed a lot since the 1960s, and the delusion of the Celtic Tiger within a new European superstate suggests that our present affluence may be a new form of enslavement.  If I draw my own parallel with the Old Testament in 1 Macchabees 1:11-16, we see the description of the apostasy of the Jews.

It is a depressing portrait of a race who throw off their distinctive beliefs and customs, given them by the true God, for the peace and prosperity of a pagan empire: an apostasy before the coming of Christ, which prefigures the apostasy before His Second Coming: Quo vadis, Hibernia?

There are many similarities between the Irish and the Jews, and the comparison is a lot more instructive than ideas about common links between Ireland and India (links which do exist but are buried in the mists of prehistory).  Unfortunately this resemblance is not a matter for self-congratulation; it is, rather, a cross to be carried.

Nations, like individuals, have their own vocations, their own specific missions.  Has Ireland, insula sanctorum et scholarum, made good use of the graces God has conferred on her?  And does she continue to do so in our own day?

* Breandán Ó Doibhlin, Néal Maidine agus Tine Oíche, Foilseacháin Náisiúnta Teoranta, 1964

 The Brandsma Review, Issue 39, October-November 1998 

Engaging the National Patron

ENGAGING THE NATIONAL PATRON
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS
Vivo autem iam non ego vivit vero in me Christus.(Galatians 2, 20)

ONE EXERCISE I did in the New Year was a response to a challenge by Joe McCarroll was to return to the fundamental documents concerning Christianity in Ireland. I am referring to St Patrick’s Confessions and Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. I worked through Dr Ludwig Bieler’s Latin text, helpfully provided in Bishop William Philbin’s Mise Pádraig and Bishop Joseph Duffy’s Patrick in His Own Words. Both bishops provided their own translation, Mgr Philbin in Irish and Mgr Duffy in English.  The former Bishop of Clogher, though, provided a free translation and also used The Jerusalem Bible as a model for the numerous scriptural quotes, for which the saint used the pre-Vulgate Latin translations. In this, Mgr Duffy followed the trends in the 1970s which elevated readability over literal accuracy in scripture and liturgy alike. But let me state that the notes in the bishop’s text are also valuable and it is possible to consult the Latin text with the English translation. For those who read Irish, Mgr Philbin’s text is both accurate and elegant and he too provides an interesting commentary.

Irish history begins in 431. This is not to say nothing happened in Ireland before this; there is plenty of evidence that much did. What it does say is that an entry in the Prosper of Aquataine’s Chronicle for this year tells us that Pope Celestine IV sent Bishop Palladius to preach to the Irish believing in Christ.  This was the initial point of a continuum which marked the systematic recording of Irish history since then, which what I mean by the first statement. The sentence itself tells us that there were Irish Christians prior to this date. There are several reasons why this was the case. First of all, there was much commercial interaction between Ireland and what is now Wales. The languages of both were still mutually comprehendible. There was population movement and trade between the two countries. Ireland was a good place to go in periods of persecution when it was still an issue in the Roman Empire. There were conversions of native Irish. And of course, many Christians were brought to Ireland as slaves.

We do not know a lot about Palladius, but the little we know is quite interesting. He was associated with St Germanus of Auxerre. St Germanus was in Britain in 429 to deal with the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius himself was British and though the case is made that he was personally orthodox, he has left his name on a heresy. He met both Ss Augustine and Jerome and made an impression. St Jerome said he was bloated with Scottish (i.e. Irish) porridge (Scotorum pultibus proegravatus). Pelagianism rejects Original Sin and the Grace of God, so Pelagians believe they gain heaven by their own labour alone and Christ is an exemplar rather than a saviour. Palladius went from Britain to Ireland where his mission was probably more successful than we imagine. But he was only the precursor in the story.

Of Welsh, Cornish and Breton stock

Before I even begin on St Patrick, there is much controversy over both his date and place of birth. I have heard a lot of arguments locating Bannava Tabarniae in Scotland, England and France, but as none of the above were yet settled by Scots, Anglo- Saxons or Franks, the location is irrelevant to the saint’s nationality. St Patrick was a Roman citizen and ethnic Celt. His family were well off, had been Christian for a few generations and seemed to have had interests in both Britain and Gaul. Mgr Duffy argues the saint’s Latin had a Gaulish accent, but this may be a product of education rather than upbringing. There was a British colony in present day Scotland, but it seems very far from a Gaulish base. I am convinced by the argument that “Tabarniae” could be the genitive for “Sabarnia”, which could indicate somewhere around the mouth of the Severn (“t” can replace an initial “s” in Celtic genitives, with the pattern crossing into Celtic Latin). Calling the saint a Welshman is an anachronism, but he was certainly of the stock of the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons. The saint was born in the late fourth century at the earliest, but I am more persuaded for the theory that his mission began in the 450s rather than the traditional 432 which seems much too close to Palladius’ apostolate. In this regard, I would calculate that the saint was born in the early fifth century.

The young saint had no interest in Christianity. He tells us that before his abduction he was guilty of some sin or other which was sufficiently grave to cause him shame much later in life. It has been suggested by modern commentators that this sin was sexual, but this would not have had particular opprobrium attached among young men of his class in the late Roman Empire, so the suggestion it was murder is a bit more convincing. St Patrick believed his abduction was a punishment for this sin. He was taken to Ireland and sold into slavery, with members of his household and others. He was sold to a farmer to keep flocks and herds, in a place now believed to be Slemish in Co Antrim. The later biographers of St Patrick state he kept pigs, but present day farmers believe only sheep would survive on the higher slopes of Slemish and pigs and cattle would be confined to lower ground. It is possible the saint did a variety of work, but what is clear is that his Christianity came alive on Slemish. Here he prayed one hundred times a day and one hundred times a night. He was eventually guided by a dream to run two hundred miles away to find a ship to take him to Gaul, Mgr Philbin suggests around Killala Bay. Initially, he was not admitted as he refused to compromise his new found Christianity. The captain thought better of it and sent a sailor after him to bring him back. It turned out that his presence was useful.  The ship landed in Gaul and the crew wandered severa lweeks in the wilderness before asking Patrick topray. After which they came upon a herd of pigs. The devastation in Gaul testifies to the barbarian assaults as the Roman Empire was breaking down in the West.

Internalised the Scriptures

St Patrick was reunited with his family at the age of twenty-two. They wanted him to stay, but he knew he had to go elsewhere. He missed out on several valuable years’ in education, which is seen in his Latin, but he did study. If the Confession and the Letter to Coroticus show anything, it is how he internalised the scripture. This is evident after he returned to Ireland.  Though later writings give a developed narrative on St Patrick’s work in Ireland, the saint himself has little to say. A strong case can be made that Letter came before the Confession. The Confession appears to be a justification made afterward. In the Letter, the saint doesn’t mince his words about the raids on Ireland.  Many of his own converts were murdered or enslaved. He attempted to ransom the converts but was rebuffed. He excommunicated all the perpetrators.  This is where the bone of contention appears to have arisen: the Church in Britain were not prepared to recognise this and carried on as if nothing had happened.  At this stage, the saint produced his own apologia.

Unconventional

The Confession is not a conventional autobiography, but does give us most of the reliable biographical information we have about St Patrick. To a large extent it is a reaction against the charges made against him by the British Church. In this respect, he is very defensive. No one can doubt the man’s sincerity, but if there is a recurring theme again and again, it is his refrain that he did not carry out the work, but that God worked through him. This is an assertion of orthodox theology against Pelagianism. It happens too often not to be deliberate. The context of a British church riddled with Pelagianism while denigrating Patrick’s personal integrity occurs to one straight away. Issues such as his lack of polished Latin or the unknown sin of his youth came up at the time, and he justified himself. They also suggested he made money from the apostolate, when in fact he spent the little he had to work with.

Trials like Saint Paul’s

One imagines that St Patrick identified very closely with St Paul. He quotes him again and again. In recounting his own trials at the hands of some more hostile recipients, St Patrick’s list is very similar to that of St Paul. Though he was not martyred, he came close enough to it on a few occasions. In relation to his effect on those he preached to, one upper class lady came to him within days of receiving baptism seeking to take the veil. Though St Patrick’s own writing plays down the miraculous, one is impressed that the saint is living in the wake of the original Pentecost with all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost, nowhere more than in the response of the Irish to his preaching.

The Confessions may be termed a working autobiography or apologia, but it lacks finality. This is par for the course in such works. However, at the time of writing, the saint concluded that the substantive work of converting the Irish to Christianity was done. To a certain extent, he seems to have believed himself to be in the end times, because he states that the message of Christ was brought to the world’s edge. This was, and is, one of the conditions which must precede the last times. St Patrick lived through the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west. Though he was first taken from his privileged position as a Roman citizen, he later chose to forego it for the greater glory of God.  But he was aware that for a great many people just like him, there was little choice in the matter. In this way, the Confessions has a flavour of the Apocalypse as well as of the Acts. St Patrick did not completely obliterate heathendom in Ireland. It took several centuries after him before this was the case: evangelisation is a slow and drawn out process and our own day shows us it can never be taken for granted and frequently needs renewal. But what the mission of the national apostle ensured was that it would happen. The impression he made on the Irish, particularly on the nobility in the north of the country which had been least touched by pre-Patrician Christian incursions, put the chain of events in motion which would result in the nation embracing the faith in its entirity sooner rather than later.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 137, March-April 2014

Hellowe'en

Hellowe'en 

by Melancholicus

Melancholicus is not sure which day he despises most—St. Patrick’s day (March 17, and a holy day of obligation in the dioceses of Ireland), or today, Hallowe’en.

Both days are—at least in their origins—religious festivals of unimpeachable character. But their celebration today has been robbed of all recognisably Christian content, whereat they are perverted to the level of bacchanalia in a spectacle of which words such as ‘orgiastic’, ‘frenzy’ and ‘excess’ would not be an unfitting description.

The feast of St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland c. 500 A.D., is today an occasion for inebriation of a kind to which even the drunken Irish are unaccustomed. The so-called “St. Patrick’s Day Parade” held in Dublin (and mimicked elsewhere throughout the country) has nothing to do with St. Patrick, or with the coming to Ireland of the light of the Christian faith, but is an unedifying spectacle reminiscent of Mardi Gras and (public nudity excepted) with a similar degree of wild abandon. The only remaining religious aspect of the day is the Mass, but even this has been infiltrated by the same kind of trivialising frivolity that has given us enormities such as green beer in the pubs and green milkshakes at McDonalds. Melancholicus has even seen the liturgical abuse of green vestments being worn during the celebration of the saint’s Mass.

But enough of poor St. Patrick, and the degradation to which celebration of his feast has sunk, for today is your blogger’s other most hated day.

The name Halloween (more properly Hallowe’en) is a contraction of All Hallows’ Even, namely the vigil of the feast of All Saints (1 November). Melancholicus traditionally celebrates Hallowe’en by reciting First Vespers of All Saints, after which he pours himself a double gin and tonic, then enjoys his dinner and—external factors permitting—relaxes by the fire. He has no time for the neo-pagan mummery now associated with Hallowe’en, or for the glut of horror films typically shown on the television, nor for the pagan apologetics and sympathetic publicizing in the media of hazards like wicca, and he has absolutely no time whatever for the frenzied youths that run wild, shoving matchboxes filled with excrement through people’s letterboxes, or inserting fireworks up the exhaust pipes of parked cars (or even in the fuel pipe in an attempt to ignite the contents of the tank), or hurling explosives at those unlucky enough to be compelled by their employment to be out in public on this night.

The association of Hallowe’en with the preternatural world is in its origin Celtic, since 1 November is Samain, which begins the dark half of the year and functions as a kind of Celtic new year’s day. What makes Samain particularly auspicious (or inauspicious, as the case may be) is that it is a junture of particular importance. In the Celtic reckoning of time, it was not days and nights that were regarded as particularly important with respect to the preternatural, but the divisions between them. Boundaries between different places were invested with a similar significance for the same reason. According to this belief, one is most likely to encounter a ghost not at night, but at dusk, since dusk is the boundary between night and day. Similarly, one may meet with greatest misfortune at the boundary between this world and the síd (otherworld), rather than in either one or the other.

So the eve of Samain is a juncture of particular danger, because many different boundaries co-incide at once. Once the sun has set but before darkness has fallen completely, it is neither day nor night; we are neither in the light half nor in the dark; we are neither in the old year nor in the new. At such times the boundaries between this world and the other are blurred, the tides of chaos are loosed and preternatural forces have free play with the world of men. Hence the origin of the association of Hallowe’en with ghosts and spectres and hauntings and that sort of thing.

This night is indeed a night of horror, but not owing to Celtic superstitions; Melancholicus is far more concerned about a potential confrontation with those who walk on two legs in a living body than with the spirits of the dead. It is prudent to keep an eye on one’s car until the chaotics have gone home to bed and the nocturnal fracas has died away. If one has a household pet such as a dog or a cat, one MUST keep the animal indoors on this night; dogs, particularly, with their amplified sense of hearing, suffer great distress on being exposed to the noise of fireworks (which, incidentally, are illegal in this country, but the law is in no wise enforced). The chaotics have been known to throw smaller animals onto bonfires, deriving a sick amusement from such cruelty. Other animals have had fireworks strapped to their bodies, or inserted into their orifices. This is the busiest night of the year for the emergency services; the police, the fire brigade, the ambulance service (and doubtless the ISPCA) will be kept going all night.

The celebration of Hallowe’en was not always so lawless and fraught with peril; it used to be, as recently as Melancholicus’ childhood, a gentle evening of fun and entertainment (with mild scariness) for the benefit of children. Today it has been taken over by the yob element, whom one cannot safely ask to move on elsewhere, never mind remonstrate, for fear—literally—of being killed. I do not exaggerate.

Excess is tolerated in our society, and from some avenues even positively encouraged.

This is the fruit of social inversion.

First posted here: http://infelixego.blogspot.ie/2008/10/helloween.html 31 October 2008

Hallowe'en: Threat or Opportunity?

HALLOWE'EN: THREAT OR OPPORTUNITY?

By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Sancta ergo, et salubris est cogitatio pro defunctis exorare, ut a peccatis solvantur (2 Macchabees, 12:46)

WHEN I was ten, I had to write an essay on Hallowe'en.  I went home from school, researched the customs and background of the festival and was commended for my work by the vice-principal.  Which was ironic as he had imposed this on us as a punishment.  Much later I graduated in Celtic Studies and with the passage of time observed the changing nature of Hallowe'en.

Hallowe'en is a phenomenon.  In the United States, it is second in commercial value only to Christmas.  It surpasses Easter, the distinctly American feasts of Thanksgiving and Independence Day and all the other holidays and commemoration days in the calendar.  This explains how Hallowe'en is encroaching rapidly upon countries and cultures where it is not traditional.  It is no exaggeration to say it has taken the German-speaking world by storm.  From being almost unknown in Germany in the mid-1990s, it is now marked even in small towns and villages all over the country.

Powers of Darkness

It is also the case that Hallowe'en is changing.  Traditionally, Hallowe'en was primarily focussed on children and, in Ireland at least, adults indulged in some innocent amusements.  But in recent years, Hallowe'en has taken a distinctly adult character.  This stems from the United States and is mainly an exploitation of the festival's market value.  And this has become a very successful export, as the profitable new Hallowe'en becomes universal.

It is more than fair to say Hallowe'en presents a threat.  Hallowe'en, as currently understood, gives us every reason for concern.  This does not relate to Hallowe'en in itself or any of the folk customs I understood to be part of Hallowe'en when I wrote my fifth-class penalty essay.  Hallowe'en is almost exclusively associated with the powers of darkness.  The post-Christian West denies these powers' existence, but increasingly pays annual tribute to them on October 31.  The witch movement keeps this date as its most important sabbath.

New Ageism in general appeals to the four principal Celtic festivals.  These festivals, which the witch movement has more or less taken as "sabbaths", mark the turning of the seasons in the British Isles.  Samain, on 1 November, was the most important of these; and all feature in so-called Celtic spirituality.  For its part, the Satanist/Luciferian movement also keeps Hallowe'en as a feast.  Though this is very much a fringe movement, this is the direction in which the ubiquitous shop window displays point.

How much do we know about the original Hallowe'en?  The Celtic feast of Samain was kept around the beginning of November.  This was a new year celebration, which also represented a harvest thanksgiving.  This new year differed from ours.  We are accustomed to go immediately from the old year to the new.  Samain was a three-day feast between the end of one year and the beginning of the next.  This "out of time" quality of Samain led the Celts to believe the dead were free to walk the earth again and that they would visit their old homes.  For this reason, the Celts were particularly mindful of dead relatives and friends around this time.

.But there is really very little evidence in source material as to how Samain was celebrated.  I have read many secondary accounts about some gruesome practices the Celts indulged in at Samain.  While I have no trouble believing the Celts to have been thoroughly barbarous as heathens (despite what Celtic Spirituality devotees may believe), I have seen no evidence for most of the claims made by occultists about Samain.  Much of this is the product of overactive imaginations.

 The Celts dominated Europe before the Roman Empire took shape.  It is impossible to reckon the extent to which Samain was observed in Europe, but it is certain it was still strong among the Gauls when they were evangelized.  The Church recognised the significance of Samain.  So two great feasts were initiated at the time - All Saints (All Hallows) on November 1 and All Souls on November 2.

Samain was providential

So was the Church culturally imperialistic or opportunistic?  Did the Church attempt to suppress Samain or use it as an instrument for conversion?  Let us say Samain, whatever it might have been in heathendom, was providential.  It served two purposes; for the Celts in helping them assimilate Christianity and for the Church, in compelling her to clarify the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.

After the institution of the two feasts, Samain became Hallowe'en, taking the name Eve of All Hallows or Halloweven, later Hallowe'en.  Thus the three day festival of Samain was maintained in the Celtic world, but with a distinctly Christian ethos.  It may well be that many of the Hallowe'en practices have their origins in pagan times.  Or it may not.  Folk traditions only last as long as they are supported by the prevailing culture and they rarely survive indefinitely without alteration.

In the case of the Irish Hallowe'en, the public practice of All Saints and All Souls was suppressed in Penal Times, but Hallowe'en continued.  Over time, the celebration apparently lost its intimate connection with the Church feasts.  It is difficult to say.  For a few generations, wake practices in Ireland were held to be in direct continuity with pagan practices.  Then some scholar suggested some were invented in Penal Times to conceal the presence of a priest illegally performing the necessary ministrations.

If I apply Occam's Razor to Hallowe'en - unbroken continuity with pagan Samain or an attempt to keep a suppressed feast alive - which is the more probable?  I am mindful of the coincidence of Hallowe'en/All Saints and Guy Fawkes' Night on November 5.  That a distinctly anti-Catholic holiday should be instituted in England to commemorate the foiling of one of the many highly dubious Catholic conspiracies in Tudor and Stuart times is very interesting indeed.  I don't believe Guy Fawkes' Night would have emerged had All Hallows not been strong in previously Catholic England.

Distorted notion of fun

So I believe that instead of reconstructing a lost heathen new year, one should compare Hallowe'en with the outlandish folk festivals associated with Catholic feasts in Mediterranean Europe. Such festivals are even more bizzare in the Orthodox world and anyone steeped in a Calvinist anthropology would shout “paganism”.

Hallowe'en was brought to the United States by Irish immigrants in the 1800s. This Hallowe'en had long lost its close ties with All Saints and All Souls. Any older significance was long forgotten. But it took many generations to take its present horrific form. It is easy to see how an apparently non-religious festival could be so attractive in a society in the process of advanced secularization. It is also easy to see how Hallowe'en could become a horror Fest once the Catholic understanding of the next world has been extracted.  Following that, it is not too difficult to see how competing groups - New Ageists, Occultists, Luciferians - could impose their own meaning on Hallowe'en.  And in the process, the commercial value increases.  Especially in a world in which adults have a distorted notion of what constitutes fun.  The terrifying new Hallowe'en is now a successful American export - even to countries in which Hallowe'en is traditional.

Television is to blame.  When I was a child, we used to go from house to house asking for apples and nuts.  More advanced children would ask for help for the Hallowe'en party.  Now it is almost universal for children to say "trick or treat" in the American manner.  One wonders about the educational value of allowing impressionable children to get what they want by threatening people with tricks.

It is a long established custom in Ireland to tell ghost stories around Hallowe'en.  These stories are told as true stories and are of a local nature the audience will identify with.  Though many may be scary, the purpose is not to frighten people.  In fact, some reflect the Catholic belief that the souls in Purgatory need our prayers and the ghosts are there to alert our attention to this fact.  Film and television does not present us with this type of ghost story.  Instead, it transmits plain and simple horror, just for the sake of shocking the viewers.  But this is all part of the Hallowe'en industry and it builds up the Hallowe'en various neo-pagan and satanist elements wish to impose upon the general public.  They have made great strides in this direction.

The Mystical Body

So what do we do about Hallowe'en?  There is very little we can do in the short term, as it is impossible to immunize oneself from the dominants culturee.  So Hallowe'en has to be put back in the context of All Saints/All Souls.  If there are to be fruit and nut collections and fun and games, this should be done as a harvest thanksgiving and in preparation for the great feasts.  In Ireland, a minor fast is kept in November to assist the souls in Purgatory.  The celebration of Hallowe'en may point in this direction.

The first step towar a new understanding of Hallowe'en is a new understanding of the relationship between the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant and the Church Suffering.  The Church - in Heaven, on Earth and in Purgatory - is the Mystical Body of Christ.  Hallowe'en should ultimately mark the launch of a festival to restate our belief in these realities and especially for charitable works towards the relief of the sould in Purgatory.  And those who think Hallowe'en too flamboyant to precede a fast ought to recall Mardi Gras and Fasching are very colourful ways of marking the beginning of Lent.

Yes, Hallowe'en is a threat; it is a battleground upon which the forces of darkness appear invincible.  Our Lord Himself reminds us the children of this world are wiser than the children of light.  But Hallowe'en is also an opportunity - for the children of light to prepare for a reaffirmation of the Communion of Saints and to do something for the souls in Purgatory.  In the early years of the Church, Samain was taken from real pagans to become All Saints and All Souls, upon which Hallowe'en depended.  Taking Hallowe'en back from neo-pagans should be less of a challenge.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 74, September-October 2004

Clontarf: A Backward Glance

CLONTARF: A BACKWARD GLANCE
By DR NIALL BRADY

THE YEAR OF 2014 a year of anniversaries. Most notably, it is the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, and of the death of that holy pope, St Pius X (of blessed memory). In the Irish context, it is the centenary of the Government of Ireland Act, and of the Howth gun-running incident involving the yacht Asgard. Further back in time, this year also sees the millennial anniversary of the death of Brian mac Cennétig, king of the Munster sept of Dál Cais, who in the course of a lengthy and illustrious political career, had succeeded in imposing his authority not only on the rest of Munster but on the rest of Ireland also, and who is known to history as Brian Boru.

It is fair to say that, insofar as he is remembered at all, Brian and his achievements are viewed much more sympathetically by Irishmen of the present time than they were by his contemporaries. The popular imagination of the past century and a half remembers Brian as something of a national hero, as an Irish patriot who, at the cost of his life, stood up to a despotic foreign tyranny in the course of which he instilled courage and national pride in the Irishmen of his day. This is a comforting and enduring myth, and it appealed especially to nationalist writers in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century; but it is nonetheless a myth, and while it owes a great deal to the nationalist aspirations of the Irish literary and academic elite of a hundred years ago, its origin is to be traced to the year 1867, in which a Trinity scholar, Dr James Henthorne Todd, published the first modern edition and translation of a previously little known Irish prose saga. This saga is entitled Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, or “The War of the Irish with the Foreigners”, and its hero is Brian Boru.

We must keep in mind that, in the 1860s, very little of the primary source material for Early Irish history had been made available in print. The great editions of the various Irish annals by Hennessy and MacCarthy, which have nourished the researches of scholars for over a century, did not then exist; and O’Donovan’s editions of the Four Masters and the Three Fragments had only been printed a few years previously. The exciting narrative of Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, in contrast with the generally dry and terse style of the annals, fired the imaginations of many, and its presentation of the life and career of Brian Boru and of the Battle of Clontarf were received uncritically not only by Irish researchers interested in Irish-Norse relations but by their Scandinavian colleagues also. Consequently, the narrative of the Cogadh dominated historical approaches to the significance of the Battle of Clontarf until in the 1960s a new generation of scholars began to study the text with a more critical eye—whereat the traditionally-accepted nationalist view began to crumble, and with it the pedestal upon which Brian had stood for the previous century.
More or less forgotten
We must also bear in mind that, with the exception of the Cogadh itself, Brian was most emphatically not a heroic figure of saga and poetry at any time between 1014 and 1867, but had been more or less forgotten; he certainly never achieved the fame of legendary literary figures such as Finn mac Cumhaill or Cú Chulainn.

I do not mean that the Cogadh routinely presents as fact details that are demonstrably fictitious, or factually
wrong; but the effect of the author’s profound bias is to lend a colour and significance to Brian’s status and the encounter at Clontarf that would not have been recognised by anyone actually alive in the Ireland of 1014. Todd believed the Cogadh was written by a contemporary and eyewitness of the Battle of Clontarf; in particular, he identified Mac Liaig, Brian’s court poet, as the likely author. Todd’s view held the field for a considerable time, but it was later realised that the text of the Cogadh is not contemporary with Clontarf at all and belongs instead to the twelfth century. Current consensus attributes the composition of the text to the time of Brian’s greatgrandson, Muirchertach Ua Briain (ob. 1119), and in particular to the years between 1103 and 1113. As to the reasons underlying its composition, this much at least is clear: the text was intended to portray Brian as a brave and selfless freedom-fighter who had saved Ireland from being crushed under the remorseless heel of the heathen Norse, and that in order to bolster the political standing of the Uí Briain dynasty in twelfth-century Ireland and their claims to the kingship exercised over the country by their ancestor.

I encourage readers who are interested in this period of Irish history to read the Cogadh for themselves.  It is almost impossible to find in print, unless one enjoys the privilege of access to a university library, but thanks to the internet it is widely available in digital form. Although written in the prolix and somewhat bombastic style popular in the twelfth century and unashamedly political, it is a great read and thoroughly enjoyable, at least to those who have some familiarity with Early Irish literature. It takes itself so seriously it is often unintentionally hilarious; the reader should take note of the contrasting manner in which Brian, his family and his enemies are presented; the language employed to describe the deeds of each and, not least, the manner in which “the foreigners” (i.e. the Norse) and their acts are presented.  These last are so exaggerated and over the top that the Cogadh has given me many a laugh in the course of my studies. The hyperbole and overblown style will both amuse and bemuse a modern readership; the similes and metaphors are all eminently memorable. I will not take up space here offering particularly ripe quotes from the text, although of course I have my favourites; I simply recommend my readers read it for themselves for, despite its flaws, it is a unique product of Ireland’s literary heritage and ought to be better known.
Cruel and heartless
It is perhaps a satisfying incidence of poetic justice that Brian Boru never made it into the literary big-time alongside the likes of Cú Chulainn; for if the latter is an embodiment of the Iron Age/Celtic/Indo-European ideal of the hero, the former is (at least to my mind) more an anti-hero, even an embodiment of the very tyranny the author of the Cogadh so deplores in his depictions of the Norse. The Cogadh presents us with a relentless onslaught of cruel, heartless, heathen barbarians from overseas (fresh in the memories of the twelfth-century Irish as the English were fresh in the memories of Irish nationalists nine centuries later) from whom Ireland needed saving if her civilisation and culture were not to be smashed down and destroyed, and her people enslaved. History, however, shows us that at the turn of the eleventh century, Ireland was not at all in danger of being conquered and utterly dominated by the Norse, either from abroad or those already settled in the country for several generations. Ireland was, however, in danger of being conquered and utterly dominated by Brian himself, and it is this danger—not that of the Norse—that led to the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

I pass over Brian’s early career, how he (and his brother Mathgamain before him) elevated Dál Cais from obscurity to power over of the whole province of Munster, and how he began to expand his power over the other provinces of Ireland. For a consideration of Clontarf it suffices to note that in the early eleventh century Brian is at the apex of his power; that he has clashed with, and subdued, Mael Morda king of Leinster, and Sitric king of Dublin; that he has wrested the kingship of Tara from Mael Sechnaill mac Domnaill the Uí Néill potentate, thus becoming the first non-Uí Néill ruler since the year 482 to hold that office. Not much of a history of warring against Norse invaders there; earlier in his career he had overthrown the Norse king Ívar of Limerick (whom he killed on Scattery Island in 977), but his beef with Ívar was a political struggle for control of Munster; if the unlucky Ívar had been of Irish rather than Norse descent, it would not have made any difference; Brian would still have gone after him. The Cogadh, naturally, makes much of this episode and presents Ívar as a rapacious and usurping marauder who oppressed all Munster but who, thanks to the heroic Brian, in the end got his just desserts.
A bitterly resented ruler
It should be remembered that Brian had no natural right or claim to overlordship over all Ireland, any more than the Norse kings of either Limerick or Dublin could have had. He was not born into the position; he did not inherit it; the position itself, the so-called “High Kingship” of Ireland did not at the time exist, either in law or in fact. Brian, by dint of cunning, influence, ruthlessness and raw military power, clawed his way to being de facto ruler of Ireland—meaning that the other local kings submitted to his authority; but their submission was to Brian personally, not to any such concept as a “King of Ireland” for, without prejudice to Alice Stopford Green, there was no such thing as “the Irish State” prior to 1014 nor for a long time afterwards. The native laws from the seventh century onwards are united in their insistence that the highest grade of king in Ireland is the rí cóicid (the king of a province); the Uí Néill, who monopolised the kingship of Tara from the fifth century to Brian’s time made much of the prestige of that kingship, but could never at any point have been described as “Kings of Ireland”. In the light of this tradition of provincial independence, it becomes easier to see why Brian’s rule was so bitterly resisted outside Munster, and why a rising against him—which is precisely what the Battle of Clontarf was—was inevitable.

The Norse, the perennial antagonists of the Cogadh, played only a minor role in the actual battle itself. There was no invading Viking army such as England had experienced the year before, and which had caused Ethelred II to flee for safety to Normandy.  The battle was in the main a decisive clash between the kings of Munster and Leinster, the latter seeking his rightful independence (and, as a Leinsterman myself, I tend to sympathise with Mael Morda), and the former seeking to retain the overlordship he had won for himself by his own power. The Norse did of course take part in the battle, but only in supporting roles; Sitric, the king of Dublin, imported mercenaries from the Orkneys and the Isle of Man to help him against Brian; and Brian, for his part, brought a contingent of the Limerick Norse to help him against Mael Morda. Norse on both sides; Irish on both sides. This was not the kind of well-defined “us versus them” struggle depicted in the Cogadh.
A family tiff
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the Battle of Clontarf is that, far from being a heroic exercise of nation-building or nation-saving, it is better described as a family tiff, inasmuch as the main participants were all related to one another. They were connected primarily through one woman—Gormflaith ingen Murchada, who was the sister of Mael Morda and the mother of Sitric (thus the Leinster allies, Mael Morda and Sitric, were uncle and nephew respectively) and finally, her third husband (after Olaf Cuarán, Sitric’s father, and the still living former king of Tara Mael Sechnaill mac Domnaill) was Brian Boru himself.  Sitric thus became Brian’s stepson and Mael Morda his brother-in-law; and if this were not already sufficiently complicated, Sitric married one of Brian’s daughters, becoming the Munster king’s son-in-law as well as his stepson. These frankly political marriages were intended to keep a clearly unstable political situation from boiling over, but did not have the desired effect. The Icelandic Njáls Saga, written in the thirteenth century but based upon lost earlier sources and which contains background narrative on the Battle of Clontarf, has a scene in which Gormflaith (now married to Brian) berates and humiliates her son Sitric for having submitted to Brian’s authority, and thus the fatal seed is sown. This scene is not recorded in any contemporary source and while, at the distance of a thousand years I cannot claim to know Gormflaith personally, I am inclined to regard it as the sort of thing she would have done. I am sure she cannot have had great love for or loyalty to Brian; all her history and her family ties were in Leinster, and I cannot fault her for that.

The great confrontation, when it occurred, was catastrophic for everyone who took part in it. It is best to read and enjoy the memorable descriptions of the battle recorded in the Cogadh, and then to put them aside; the Cogadh, which has supplied us with such wonderful details as the aged Brian being slain by  bloodthirsty Viking while praying in his tent (which we all remember from our schooldays) is not reliable history. Of course the Cogadh is going to talk the battle up in language redolent of Homer; this is the dénouement of its hero, after all. A truer picture of the battle, devoid of hyperbole and derring-do, is provided in the bald, unadorned testimony of the annals. I propose one can reliably infer how bloody such an encounter may have been by scrutinising the lists of the important persons who perished on both sides, and in the case of Clontarf, the lists of the slain are prodigious. Brian’s forces are supposed to have been victorious, but how does one measure victory in this instance? Brian’s lordship over Ireland was not maintained.  Brian himself did not survive the battle. Nor did the majority of his sons and grandsons. In fact so many of the leading men of Dál Cais and the fledgling Uí Briain dynasty were killed that their political aspirations were scotched for generations. Is this victory? On the other side, Mael Morda king of Leinster lost his life, but he had achieved what he set out to do—throw off the yoke of the Munster tyrant and win independence for his province. The Norse mercenaries Sitric imported from Man and the Orkneys were destroyed—perhaps this is what is understood as “victory” by the writer of the Cogadh. If so, it may have served his purpose; but in 1014 it did not look that way. There were two real winners of the Battle of Clontarf: Sitric, who did not take part but (at least according to the Cogadh) watched the proceedings from the ramparts of Dublin—let us recall that while Clontarf is part of the modern city, in the eleventh century the Clúain Tarb, the “bulls’ meadow”, lay outside the city limits; and Mael Sechnaill, who after Brian’s death took up the kingship of Tara once more, unopposed, and held it until his death in 1022. And as for Brian? His flame burned bright for a season, but as the Scripture says, He that loveth the danger shall perish in it (Ecclesiasticus 3, 27). God have mercy on all their souls.

Dr Niall Brady has higher degrees in Old Irish and Old Norse, specialising in Viking chiefs in early Irish history. He filed this article from Afghanistan where he is currently serving with the US Army.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 131, March-April 2014

Smashing the Celtic Delusion

SMASHING THE CELTIC DELUSION
By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

The Quest for Celtic Christianity, Donald E. Meek, The Handsel Press, Edinburgh, 2000, 282 pp

CELTIC TIGER MAY BE DEAD, but the Celtic brand still attracts. Seven nations are unequivocally Celtic: Ireland; Scotland; the Isle of Man; Wales; Cornwall; Brittany; and Galicia. One can argue that the basic ethnic stock of northern Portugal; northern Spain; France; Belgium; Switzerland; southern Germany; northern Italy; Austria; the Czech Republic; western Hungary and south-western Poland is Celtic. Evidence for this is seen in artefacts, place names and classical writings. St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is addressed to the descendants of Alexander the Great’s Celtic mercenaries who settled in Asia Minor. In Christ’s day, these people spoke a Celtic language.

Two millennia later a trip to a religious bookshop will turn up any number of titles offering Celtic spirituality, Celtic Christianity or the like. I can name David Adam, Esther de Waal and John O’Donoghue among many. Donald Meek addresses this phenomenon in this book.

My own background is in Celtic Studies; and I see academic Celtic scholars avoid popularised Celtica with good reason. Professor Meek is an exception. He is Professor Emeritus of Celtic in the University of Aberdeen; and is a native speaker of Scots Gaelic from the island of Tiree where his father served as a Baptist minister. His commitment to evangelical Christianity is clear, which adds power to many of his points more. One must commend his patience in carefully reading purported Celtic material written by people with limited, if any, understanding of the Celtic tongues.
Celtic Christianity…therapeutic spirituality
Professor Meek begins with the proliferation of books on Celtic Christianity remarkably compatible with popular therapeutic spirituality. He compares it to other outsider presentation of ethnic spiritualties, quoting reactions of real members of these communities: many Native Americans are not impressed at their depiction in such books. Ireland is the main Celtic country which buys into this, where he cites the late John O’Donoghue. Father O’Donoghue spoke Irish and studied philosophy and theology at advanced levels, but he has not shown much evidence of study of literature in Irish. The market for these
works is strongest in metropolitan England and the United States.

Professor Meek starts in the Highlands. Fifteen years after the 1746 Battle of Culloden, James Macpherson presented his “translation” of Ossian’s (Oisín) poems concerning his father Fingal (Fionn MacCumhaill). Macpherson may have used existing Gaelic poetry here, but no Gaelic original has been found and the work is considered Macpherson’s own, even with Hebridean influence. But as fraudulent we might see this, the Ossian cycle was enormously influential across Enlightened and Romantic Europe. Ossian left an impact on two critics: Ernest Renan (1823-92) and Matthew Arnold (1822-88). Renan and Arnold popularised Celtica, but neither understood any Celtic language. As such, they could not consider Ossian was Macpherson’s original work. While Renan and Arnold were active, there was solid academic work in progress particularly in Germany and early Irish and Welsh works were edited, translated and studied. Serious scholars like Kuno Meyer (1858-1919) and Douglas Hyde (1860-1949) did not distance themselves from the Celtic Twilight. In the Irish case, this study gave impetus to political nationalism, felt in other Celtic countries too.

Celtica moved on in the 1900s, but romanticism remained as it was. In the early twenty-first, Professor Meeks writes to separate the two. Anyone who visiting Glendalough could hear the Roman Church superseded the Celtic Church in the 12th century.  This partly reflects Reformation polemics, but the Celtic Church must be taken on its own terms. It was adamant it belonged to the Great Church. Its liturgy and scripture were Latin and it appealed to the See of Rome. This Church’s features: monasticism; relics; penance, were not proto-Protestant. If there was an eastern connexion, even with Egypt, it was because many early practices common to East and West survived in Celtic regions while declining elsewhere. Irish monks were very conservative regarding the date of Easter as Rome sought uniformity. As St Benedict defined western monasticism, Irish and British (Welsh, Cornish and Bretons) monks retained older models. The term anamchara literally means “soul friend”, was used to mean confessor and Professor Meek believes private confession was a Celtic development. The Hildebrandine reform was driven by Celts themselves in the Celtic nations.
Not unique to Celts
The romanticists emphasise the poetic Celts. But this separates the Celts from contemporary peoples. There are Anglo-Saxon literary visions and dreams.  Celtic Studies is tragically isolated from Mediaeval Studies and cognate disciplines. Many issues the Irish Church dealt with relating to marriage laws and other heathen survivals were encountered elsewhere. Most mediaeval European histories focus on England, France and the Holy Roman Empire rather than fringe nations. Yet the Norman occupation of Ireland, Wales and Sicily; the Teutonic Order’s crusade in the Baltic region; the Reconquista in Spain; and Norman expansion into Scotland offer newer perspectives which might lead us to think Celtic history less unique.

Professor Meek cites many working Celtic scholars; I will refer to three. Cork’s Donnchadh Ó Corráin often states what should be obvious. Celtic popularisers believe monastic hermits waxed lyrical on nature in verse, Professor Ó Corráin pointed out those who chose penitential life in wilderness were unlikely to notice natural beauty, and busy monastic scribes, writing in isolation from nature, were more likely composers. Maynooth’s Kim McCone made the case for reading early Irish literature as Christian work in Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature. Professor McCone refers to analogous studies in other areas (Icelandic sagas come to mind), to back up his thesis. Cambridge’s Patrick Sims-Williams has analysised philosophy and ideology behind Celtic Studies. I find Professor Sims-Williams’ ability to step back and compare trends here to other ideologies fascinating.

As stated above, Professor Meek is a practicing evangelical Protestant concerned with contemporary issues.He writes movingly of the importance of the Celtic saints to Protestantism and how steeped these figures were in Scripture. Much of the material he critiques is used in Protestant services. These are poor substitutes for the Bible. This is balm for the rat race, but is woefully inadequate for inner city underprivileged. Evangelisation is required and ancient saints would not have shirked this challenge; a reality check we have to learn from.

It has been a long time since I read a book on Celtica I enjoyed, as most of what I have reviewed is the dodgy material named and shamed in The Brandsma Review. But Professor Meek is not writing for Celtic Scholars. This is by far the best book on the topic I have read for non-specialists written by a specialist.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 132, May-June 2014

Looking Beyond the Obvious: Scripture in Irish Myth

LOOKING BEYOND THE OBVIOUS: SCRIPTURE IN IRISH MYTH
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature, Kim McCone, An Sagart, Maynooth, 1990, 287 pp

SOME BOOKS HAVE a long afterlife. This is why I am returning to a book I read on publication nearly a quarter century later. Not that Professor McCone’s thesis was new. Essentially he presents arguments already advanced by the late James Carney in the course of a lifetime, but especially in his 1955 book, Studies in Irish Literature and History. I was reminded of the significance of these, and other writings by students of Professor Carney from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies when I penned my review of Donald Meeks’ The Quest for Celtic Christianity in the Brandsma, no. 132. Given the praise Professor Meeks heaped on Pagan Past and Christian Present, I revisited the text.

The Romantic movement generated a new interest in the Celts throughout Europe. James MacPherson’s dubious Ossian poems and the whole Arthurian cycle made an imprint on the art and music of 19th century Europe. Meanwhile, studies in Sanskrit beginning in the 18th century initiated serious scientific study of ancient languages across a continent and a half. This meant that from the 1850s on, a great many of the earliest texts in Irish and Welsh were widely available. The effects this had on cultural and subsequently political history in Ireland is well-known (though perhaps less isolated than we imagine. The birth of many nations after 1918 did not just happen). This article will follow the intellectual developments within the
discipline since its emergence, all well documented in the book under review.
Psychological messages
In intellectual circles, the first reaction to the new study was to regard the material in Old and Middle Irish and Welsh as historical, or at least having a historical basis. The stories do give us an insight into the history of the Celts prior to Christianity and literacy, but it became quickly apparent that they could not be treated as historical. The second phase was to regard the tales as mythological, which is correct, and to subject them to the various interpretations of mythology, which yields a myriad of results. In the earlier days, this read as an attempt to explain or come to terms with natural phenomena, such as the weather or earthquakes. More recently, it has been popular to read psychological messages into myth. There is a point to this; Dr Theodore Dalrymple is fond of stating there are good reasons why the stepmother is the resident villain in many fairytales, but this can be carried too far.

In Ireland, a century of scholarship went into analysing the texts for evidence of paganism. The objective was to reconstruct the culture of primeval Ireland. This was fueled by nationalism which followed from the 19th century continental romantic movement, but there was an international context for this too. The growth in Indo-European studies inspired a seeking of connexions between Ireland and several other related cultures in Europe and Asia in a realm stretching as far East as India and including much of the Middle East and Central Asia. There is no doubt that similarities do occur, but some serious Celtic scholars went overboard. The premise that the corpus of Irish literature, almost exclusively committed to writing in monastic scriptoria, was essentially reflective of a much older oral tradition which extended deep into the Iron Age to a time before
either classical civilisation or Christianity made a mark. If obvious “monkish interpolations” were disregarded,
this is what you got.

This is reflective of literary criticism in general, when applied to ancient literatures. Biblical studies, for example, routinely break Genesis down into three or four strands, while parsing the Gospels of Matthew and Luke for evidence of what they borrowed from Mark and what came from the hypotethical Q document. The problem with reading texts for evidence of long oral traditions or traces of lost documents is that the text itself is neglected. The first two chapters of Genesis may well come from a less ancient source than the rest of the book, but the fact they are put first is part of the reason why Genesis has come down to us in its present shape and the first point of reference is what we have rather than what might have been. Likewise, the Táin Bó Cuailgne is first a text composed in the later part of the first millenium. It certainly does reflect strongly on what went before it, but it should be first dealt with on its own terms. Just consider how far we would get if we were to read this morning’s editorials by asking about the writer’s personal history, background or possible prejudices. We could conjecture a lot, rightly or wrongly, and it would be fascinating, but we would have ignored the point he was trying to make. We also might remember that oral tradition, folklore, is not a static but a dynamic process; folktales change over time to reflect new realities.
Collective imagination
James Carney was aloof of all this. Professor Carney proposed that the most obvious reference for the monks dealing in Irish legends were biblical and classical themes. He didn’t always get it right. The story of Cormac Mac Airt begins with the future high king being suckled by a wolf, before being rescued by shepherds and only later realising his true birth as a prince. Professor Carney naturally saw Romulus in this tale, but wider studies in Indo-European myth shows Cyrus of Persia (Farsi is an Indo-European language) going through the same pattern, the transition from the animal environment through humble human society to regal splendour. Greek and Germanic sagas show the same thing. But to see how deeply ingrained this sequence is on humanity, look no further than the Nativity. St Luke says nothing about ox or ass; he just says Our Lady wrapped the Christ Child in swaddelling clothes and laid Him in a manger (Luke 2,7); it is collective imagination that has us see Our Lord born with the dumb beasts keeping Him warm, then adored by the Shepherds (Luke 2, 8-20), before finally being worshipped by the Magi, whom we see as the kings from the East (Matthew 2, 1-12). As in the case of Cormac, Romulus and Cyrus, when Christ is identified as a king, His life is in danger (Matthew 2, 13-18). The ancient heroic life is so powerful that when modern scriptwriters deal with Superman or Luke Skywalker, the screenplay is not much different.

One instance does not invalidate the professor’s thesis. What Professor McCone does is to show the ingenuity that the monastic scribes put into constructing what we now identify as early Irish literature. As St Augustine divided the history of mankind into six (or seven) ages, the Irish did likewise with their own history in Lebor Gabala (the Book of Invasions). The Old Testament is broken into five ages; there are five invasions of Ireland which correspond to these: the Partholonians; the Nemed; the Fir Bolg; the Tuatha Dé (Danann); and the Milesians. The extent to which this is shaped by the Old Testament is fascinating in its own right. The invaders from the sea, the Formorians, who bear more than a passing resemblance to the contemporary Vikings, are made to look like the Philistines. This is brought out very clearly when the tiny Lugh of the Tuatha Dé (Danann is usually omitted in the texts) kills the Formorian giant Balor of the Evil Eye with a sling. The wanderings of the Milesians over 40 years in the desert is very similar to the experience of the Children of Israel in the desert. The wisdom of Cormac MacAirt is contrasted with that of Solomon. The presentation of the druid is not too distant from that of the sons of Aaron in the Old Testament, but as these priests are villains in the Gospel, so too are the druids in the lives of St Patrick, whose coming heralds the dawn of the sixth age in Ireland, that of the Gospel. The confrontation between Patrick and druids resembles Moses’ clashes with Pharoah’s priests in Exodus (eg 7, 8-13) and that of Elias with the priests of Baal in 1 Kings (18, 20- 46). In terms of narrative, St Patrick ushers in the New Testament period in Ireland.
Advanced monastic schools
To put this in context, Ireland’s monastic schools developed very fast and absorbed a sizeable amount of classical literature, the Scriptures, the apocrypha and the works of the Fathers. The quality of Latin was very high and the speed with which learning was relayed was fast. Within 50 years of the death of St Isidore of Seville in 636, Irish authors were frequently quoting him, which isn’t found commonly in continental Europe outside Spain prior to 700. The degree to which ecclesiastical influence pervaded can be astonishing. The early Irish church recognised seven minor and major orders between porter and bishop (acolyte was not included); the various secular ranks of society were similarly stratified. If one analyses the linguistics of many of the old Irish tales without looking for biblical or classical themes, one will find that much of the language is either a direct borrowing from Latin or a calque, which is the compounding of two Irish words to translate a Latin concept based on the fusion of two Latin words. Much of the work in Irish followed the Irish monks wherever they went in Europe. The decoding of Old Irish points out where: commentaries on the Pauline Epistles in Würzburg (associated with St Kilian); on the Psalter in Milan (near St Columbanus’ Bobbio) and Priscian’s Latin grammar in San Gallen (named after St Gall). These texts are all in Latin, but the marginal notation in Old Irish enables us to construct the language.
A very different picture
What this book does is celebrate the breath-taking achievements of Irish monasteries in the period between St Patrick and the Norman invasion. This was an extremely erudite and self-confident Church, one which carried the Gospel and learning with it throughout western Europe. What makes this different from the scholarship before is that it does not try to speculate on the type of culture which dominated Ireland in the centuries prior to Christianity–I cannot even say with certainty if there was only one such culture. What Professor McCone does is focus on the culture of those writing these texts and who their readers were. This presents a very different picture; he himself cites the example of studies in Icelandic sagas which led to reading them as an early Christian literature as a pattern for Irish studies to follow.

This book is for specialists, though it could be read with profit by scholars outside the area of Celtic Studies interested in the mediaeval period, whether from literary, historical, philosophical or theological angle. I have to praise Monsignor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta who went out on a limb to publish this work and many others like it. The author, Kim McCone, was professor of Old and Middle Irish in Maynooth for a couple of decades. He is of a high Anglican background and is married to the late Archbishop George Otto Simms’ daughter. Whatever of his personal religious convictions, he emphasised to his mainly lay students that he was teaching from the perspective of an agnostic and also that this was his current view, which was subject to revision. I cannot tell what the overall effect was, but I know a good proportion of his students found they had little option but improve their biblical knowledge to appreciate the lectures which were the basis of this book. I was one of these myself.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 135, November-December 2014