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
