Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum Part 2

In the centre there was a number of fires in a line between the benches, and over the fires was fixed a row of spits depending from the roof, at which a very large number of joints might be roasted. There is in the _Book of Leinster_ a ground-plan of the building, and the rude figure of a cook in the centre turning the spit with his mouth open, and a ladle in his hand to baste the joint. The king of Erin took his place at the head of the hall on the south surrounded by the provincial kings. The n.o.bles and officers were arranged on either side according to their dignity down to the lowest, or northern end of the hall, which was crowded with butlers, scullions, and retainers. They slept at night on the couches, but not unfrequently under them.

The appearance of Cormac at the head of this great hall is thus described in an extract copied into the _Book of Ballymote_ from the older and now lost _Book of Navan_[32]:--

"Beautiful was the appearance of Cormac in that a.s.sembly. Flowing and slightly curling was his golden hair. A red buckler with stars and animals of gold, and fastenings of silver upon him. A crimson cloak in wide descending folds around him, fastened at his neck with precious stones. A neck torque of gold around his neck. A white s.h.i.+rt with a full collar, and intertwined with red gold thread, upon him. A girdle of gold inlaid with precious stones was around him. Two wonderful shoes of gold, with golden loops, upon his feet. Two spears with golden sockets in his hands, with many rivets of red bronze. And he was himself besides symmetrical and beautiful of form, without blemish or reproach."

This might be deemed a purely imaginary description, if the collection of antiquities in the Royal Irish Academy did not prove beyond doubt that golden ornaments similar to those referred to in this pa.s.sage were of frequent use in Ireland. In the year 1810 two neck torques of purest gold, the same as those described above, were found on the Hill of Tara itself, and are now to be seen in the Academy's collection.

"Alas," says an old writer, "Tara to-day is desolate; it is a green gra.s.sy land; but it was once a n.o.ble hill to view, the mansion of warlike heroes, in the days of Cormac O'Cuinn--when Cormac was in his glory."

Everything at Tara, even its present desolation, is full of interest, and reminds us of the days "when Cormac was in his glory." His house is there within the circle of the great _Rath na Riogh_. The mound where he kept his hostages may still be seen beside his Rath. The stream issuing from the well _Neamhnach_, on which he built the first mill in Ireland for his handmaiden, Ciarnaid, to spare her the labour of grinding with the quern, still flows down the eastern slope of Tara Hill, and still, says Petrie, turns a mill. Even the well on the western slope, beside which Cormac's _cuchtair_, or kitchen, was built, has been discovered. The north-western _claenfert_, or declivity, where he corrected the false judgment of King Mac Con about the trespa.s.s of the widow's sheep may still be traced. The Rath of his step-mother, Maeve, can be seen not far from Tara; and to the west of the _Teach Miodhchuarta_ may be noticed _Rath Graine_, the sunny palace of his daughter, the faithless spouse of Finn Mac c.u.mhail.

O'Flaherty tells us on the authority of an old poem found in the _Book of Shane Mor O'Dugan_, who flourished about A.D. 1390, that Cormac founded three schools at Tara--one for teaching the art of war, the second for the study of history, and the third was a school of jurisprudence. It was, doubtless, the first regular college founded in ancient Erin, and like the school of Charlemagne, was within the royal palace. The fact is extremely probable, especially as Cormac himself was an accomplished scholar in all these sciences. This brings us to the literary works attributed to Cormac Mac Art by all our ancient Irish scholars.

The first of these is a treatise still extant in ma.n.u.script ent.i.tled _Teagusc na Riogh_, or _Inst.i.tutio Principum_. It is ascribed to King Cormac in the _Book of Leinster_ written before the Anglo-Norman Invasion of Ireland. It takes the form of a dialogue between Cormac and his son and successor, Cairbre Lifeachair; "and," says the quaint old Mac Geoghegan, "this book contains as goodly precepts and moral doc.u.ments as Cato or Aristotle did ever write." The language is of the most archaic type; some extracts have been translated and published in the _Dublin Penny Journal_.

A still more celebrated work, now unfortunately lost, the _Saltair of Tara_, has been universally attributed to Cormac by Irish scholars.

Perhaps we should rather say it was compiled under his direction. "It contained," says an ancient writer in the _Book of Ballymote_, "the synchronisms and genealogies, as well as the succession of the [Irish]

kings and monarchs, their battles, their contests, and their antiquities from the world's beginning down to the time it was written. And this is the _Saltair of Tara, which is the origin and fountain of the histories of Erin_ from that period down to the present time." "This," adds the writer in the _Book of Ballymote_, "is taken from the _Book of Ua Chongbhail_"--that is the _Book of Navan_--a still more ancient but now lost work. Not only do the writer in the ancient _Book of Navan_, and the copyist in the _Book of Ballymote_, expressly attribute this work to Cormac, but a still more ancient authority, the poet Cuan O'Lochain, who died in A.D. 1024, has this stanza in his poem on Tara:--

"He [Cormac] compiled the _Saltair of Tara_, In that _Saltair_ is contained The best summary of history; It is the _Saltair_ which a.s.signs Seven chief kings to Erin of harbours," &c., &c.

And it is, indeed, self-evident to the careful student of our annals that there must have been some one ancient "origin and fountain" from which the subsequent historians of Erin have derived their information--which existing monuments prove to be quite accurate--concerning the reign of Cormac and his more immediate predecessors in Ireland. The man who restored the Feis of Tara, and who, as we shall presently see, was also a celebrated judge and lawyer, was exactly such a person of forethought and culture as would gather together the poets and historians of his kingdom to execute under his own immediate direction this great work for the benefit of posterity. Keating tells us that it was called the _Saltair of Tara_ because the chief Ollave of Tara had it in his official custody; and as Cormac Mac Cullinan's Chronicle was called the _Saltair of Cashel_, and the Biblical Poem of Aengus the Culdee was called the _Saltair na Rann_, so this great compilation was named the _Saltair of Tara_. This, as O'Curry remarks, disposes of Petrie's objection that its name would rather indicate the Christian origin of the book. The answer is simple--Cormac never called the book by this name, as surely the compilers of the great works known as the _Book of Ballymote_ or the _Book of Leinster_ never called those famous compilations by their present names.

Cormac was also a distinguished jurist--of that we have conclusive evidence in the _Book of Aicill_, which has been published in the third volume of the Brehon Law publications. The book itself is most explicit as to its authors.h.i.+p, and everything in the text goes to confirm the statements in the introduction, part of which is worth reproducing here.

"The place of this book is Aicill close to Temhair [Tara], and its time is the time of Coirpri Lifechair, son of Cormac, and its author is Cormac, and the cause of its having been composed was the blinding of the eye of Cormac by aengus Gabhuaidech, after the abduction of the daughter of Sorar, son of Art Corb, by Cellach, son of Cormac."

The author then tells us how the spear of Aengus grazed the eye of Cormac and blinded him.

"Then Cormac was sent out to be cured at Aicill [the Hill of Skreen]

... and the sovereignty of Erin was given to Coirpri Lifechair, son of Cormac, for it was prohibited that anyone with a blemish should be king at Tara, and in every difficult case of judgment that came to him he [Coirpri] used to go to ask his father about it, and his father used to say to him, 'my son that thou mayest know' [the law], and 'the exemptions;' and these words are at the beginning of all his explanations. And it was there, at Aicill, that this book was thus composed, and wherever the words 'exemptions,' and 'my son that thou mayest know,' occur was Cormac's part of the book, and Cennfaeladh's part is the rest."

This proves beyond doubt that the greatest portion of this _Book of Aicill_ was written by Cormac at Skreen, near Tara, when disqualified for holding the sovereignty on account of his wound. It was a treatise written for the benefit of his son unexpectedly called to fill the monarch's place at Tara. The text, too, bears out this account. Cormac, apparently furnished the groundwork of the present volume by writing for his son's use a series of maxims or principles on the criminal law of Erin, which were afterwards developed by Cormac himself, and by subsequent commentators. That the archaic legal maxims so enunciated in the _Book of Aicill_ were once written by Cormac himself there can be no reasonable doubt; although it is now quite impossible to ascertain how far the development of the text was the work of Cormac or of subsequent legal authorities, who doubtless added to and modified the commentary, whilst they left Cormac's text itself unchanged.

This _Book of Aicill_, the authenticity of which cannot, we think, be reasonably questioned, proves to a certainty that in the third century of the Christian era there was a considerable amount of literary culture in Celtic Ireland. These works are still extant in the most archaic form of the Irish language; they have been universally attributed to Cormac Mac Art for the last ten centuries by all our Irish scholars; the intrinsic evidence of their authors.h.i.+p and antiquity is equally striking--why then should we reject this ma.s.s of evidence, and accept the crude theories of certain modern pretenders in the antiquities of Ireland, who without even knowing the language undertake to tell us that there was no knowledge of the use of writing in Ireland before St. Patrick?

And is not such an a.s.sertion _a priori_ highly improbable? The Romans had conquered Britain in the time of Agricola--the first century of the Christian era. The Britons themselves had very generally become Christians during the second and third centuries, and had, to some extent at least, been imbued with Roman civilization. Frequent intercourse, sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, existed between the Irish and Welsh tribes especially. A British king was killed at the battle of Magh Mucruimhe in Galway, where Cormac's own father was slain. The allies of Mac Con on that occasion were British. He himself had spent the years of his exile in Wales. Captives from Ireland were carried to Britain, and captives from Britain were carried to Ireland. Is it likely then that when the use of letters was quite common in Britain for three centuries no knowledge of their use would have come to Ireland until the advent of St. Patrick in the fifth century of the Christian era?

There is an ancient and well founded tradition that Cormac Mac Art died a Christian, or as the Four Masters say, "turned from the religion of the Druids to the wors.h.i.+p of the true G.o.d." It is in itself highly probable.

Some knowledge of Christianity must have penetrated into Ireland even so early as the reign of Cormac Mac Art. It is quite a popular error to suppose that there were no Christians in Ireland before the time of St.

Patrick. Palladius had been sent from Rome before Patrick "to the Scots,"

that is the Irish, "who believed in Christ." Besides that intimate connection between Ireland and Britain, of which we have spoken, must have carried some knowledge of Christianity, as well as of letters, from one country to the other. King Lucius, the first Christian King of the British, flourished quite half a century before the time of King Cormac.

Tertullian speaks of the Isles of the Britains as subject to Christ about the time that Cormac's father, Art, was slain at Magh Mucruimhe. There was a regularly organised hierarchy in England during the third century; and three of its bishops were present at the Council of Arles in A.D. 314.

Nothing is more likely, then, than that the message of the Gospel was brought from England to the ears of King Cormac; and that a prince, so learned and so wise, gave up the old religion of the Druids, and embraced the new religion of peace and love.

But it was a dangerous thing to do even for a king. The Druids were very popular and very influential, and moreover possessed, it was said, dreadful magical powers. They showed it afterwards in the time of St.

Patrick, and now they showed it when they heard Cormac had given up the old religion of Erin, and become a convert to the new wors.h.i.+p from the East. The king's death was caused by the bone of a salmon sticking in his throat, and it was universally believed that this painful death was brought about by the magical power of Maelgenn, the chief of the Druids.

"They loosed their curse against the king, They cursed him in his flesh and bones; And daily in their mystic ring They turned the maledictive stones.

"Till where at meat the monarch sate, Amid the revel and the wine, He choked upon the food he ate At Sletty, southward of the Boyne."[33]

So perished A.D. 267, the wisest and best of the ancient kings of Erin.

Cormac, when dying, told his people not to bury him in the pagan cemetery of Brugh on the Boyne, but at Rossnaree, where he first believed, and with his face to the rising sun. But when the king was dead, his captains declared they would bury their king with his royal sires in Brugh:--

"Dead Cormac on his bier they laid; He reigned a king for forty years, And shame it were, his captains said, He lay not with his royal peers.

"What though a dying man should rave Of changes o'er the eastern sea; In Brugh of Boyne shall be his grave And not in noteless Rossnaree."

So they prepared to cross the fords of Boyne and bury the king at Brugh.

But royal Boyne was loyal to its dead king; "the deep full-hearted river rose" to bar the way; and when the bearers attempted to cross the ford, the swelling flood swept them from their feet, caught up the bier, and "proudly bore away the king" on its own heaving bosom. Next morning the corpse was found on the bank of the river at Rossnaree, and was duly interred within the hearing of its murmuring waters. There great Cormac was left to his rest with his face to the rising sun, awaiting the dawning of that Glory which was soon to lighten over the hills and valleys of his native land.

Cormac Mac Art was not only himself a lover of letters, but seems to have transmitted his own talents to his family. There is a very ancient poem in the _Book of Leinster_, which has been published by O'Curry, and has been attributed to Ailbhe, daughter of Cormac Mac Art. The language is of the most archaic character, and the sentiments expressed are not inconsistent with the origin ascribed to the poem in the _Book of Leinster_. Still critics will be naturally sceptical as to the authenticity of the poem.

Meave (Meadhbh), step-mother of Cormac, who has given her name to Rath Meave at Tara, is credited with being the author of a poem in praise of Cuchorb, in which his martial prowess and numerous battles are duly celebrated. This lady seems to have been decidedly 'blue' in her tastes, for she built a choice house within her Rath, where the chief master of every art used to a.s.semble. She was amorous too, and "would not permit any king to reign in Tara who did not first take herself as wife." Perhaps there is some truth in the ancient and romantic story recorded in the same _Book of Leinster_, that when Cuchorb was killed, she was sorrowful in heart, and after they set up the grave stone of the fallen hero, she chanted his death song in presence of the a.s.sembled warriors, who stood around his grave.

Another pre-Patrician, if not pre-Christian poet, to whom some extant poems have been attributed, was Torna Eigas, the bard of Niall of the Nine Hostages. Niall died in A.D. 405, twenty-seven years before St. Patrick came to preach in Erin; so that even if Torna Eigas, as Colgan thinks, became a Christian, his training and inspiration must belong to the pre-Christian times. If the works attributed to him are even substantially genuine, they must have been interpolated by later copyists with Christian references and Christian sentiments. O'Reilly mentions four poems as pa.s.sing under his name. The first is addressed to King Niall his patron, and foster son. The second was designed to effect a reconciliation between Niall and the foster child of the poet, King Corc of Munster, who, as we shall see hereafter, certainly lived to become a Christian. In the third the poet describes the pleasant life which he spent with these two kings, his foster children, who lavished upon him alternately during his visits their friends.h.i.+p and their favours. But the fourth is by far the most interesting, for it describes the famous burying place of the Pagan kings of Erin, Relig na Riogh, at Rath Cruachan in Connaught. It consists of twenty-eight stanzas, and enumerates the great kings and warriors who sleep on the hill of Royal Cruachan, ending with the valiant Dathi, whose grave is marked by a red pillar stone, which stands there to-day, even as it stood before St. Patrick crossed the Shannon to preach the Gospel to Laeghaire's daughters on that famous hill. This poem has been published by Petrie in his Essay on the _Antiquities of Tara Hill_.

The history of the valiant King Dathi is full of charm for our Celtic poets, and several of them have sought, not unsuccessfully, to reproduce the spirit of the original poem by Torna Eigas. Better than all others poor Clarence Mangan tells in quite Homeric style:--

"How Dathi sailed away--away-- Over the deep resounding sea; Sailed with his hosts in armour gray, Over the deep resounding sea, Many a night and many a day; And many an islet conquered he, Till one bright morn, at the base Of the Alps in rich Ausonian regions, His men stood marshalled face to face With the mighty Roman legions....

But:-- Thunder crashes, Lightning flashes, And in an instant Dathi lies On the earth a ma.s.s of blackened ashes.

Then mournfully and dolefully The Irish warriors sailed away Over the deep resounding sea."

Reference is made in our ancient extant ma.n.u.scripts to several 'Books' now lost, which are said to have been written before the arrival of St.

Patrick in Ireland. It is unnecessary, however, to refer to those in detail; because any statements about their character and origin can be little better than mere conjecture. O'Curry names several of them, and tells all that can possibly be known about them. The "Cuilmen" appears to have been one of the oldest and most celebrated, because it contained the great epic of ancient Erin known as the "Tain Bo Chuailnge." Another famous ancient 'Book,' now lost, was the "Cin Droma Snechta," or the Vellum Stave Book of Drom Snechta, as O'Curry translates it. It is quoted in the _Book of Ballymote_, and in the _Book of Lecan_.

Another lost work, to which we have already referred, was the _Book of Ua Chongbhail_. It was extant in the time of Keating, who quotes it as one of his authorities, but it has since been unfortunately lost, and nothing is now known of its contents.

II.--SEDULIUS.

It is said, however, that there were not only pagan writers and scholars, like Cormac Mac Art, in Ireland before the time of St. Patrick, but that several celebrated Christian writers, who flourished before the advent of our national Apostle, were of Irish birth or parentage. And this is the opinion, not merely of superficial writers, but of grave and learned men like Colgan, Usher, and Lanigan; and what is more, it has been admitted by foreigners as well as by our native authorities. These authorities have claimed for Ireland the great glory of having given birth to the celebrated Sedulius, the Christian Virgil, as he has been most appropriately called. The more doubtful honour of producing Caelestius, the a.s.sociate of the heresiarch Pelagius, has been also claimed for Ireland; and according to others Pelagius himself was at least of Irish extraction. We propose to examine at some length the history of these writers, and especially to examine the evidence in favour of their alleged Irish origin. In the first place we shall give a full account, so far as it is now possible to ascertain his history, of the celebrated poet Sedulius.

In the best MSS. the name given is always "Caelius Sedulius," and although the praenomen savours of Latin origin, and the nomen itself was not quite unknown in Rome,[34] still the name Sedulius gives decided indications of his Irish birth. At least two other distinguished Irishmen bore the same name. The first is that Sedulius of Irish origin, the Bishop of Britain, as he describes himself,[35] who subscribed the Acts of the Council of Rome held under Gregory II., in A.D. 721. The other, known as Sedulius the Younger, flourished in the first quarter of the ninth century, wrote a Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, and, as we shall see, has been frequently confounded with his more celebrated namesake, the poet. The old form of the name in Irish was Siadhal, or Siadhel, now p.r.o.nounced s.h.i.+el.

But in these older forms of the language the letters were not mortified in p.r.o.nunciation; and thus Sedulius is naturally the latinized form of the Irish name. From the dawn of our history it was a name celebrated in Irish literature, especially in the department of medicine. Colgan refers to eight distinguished Irishmen who bore the family name of Siadhal, amongst others to Siadhal, son of Luath, Bishop of Dubhlinn, whose death on the 12th of February, 785, is recorded in the Martyrology of Donegal. The Danes, indeed, had not arrived in Dublin so early as A.D. 785, nor is there any satisfactory evidence of a diocese of Dublin at that time. He may, however, have been an abbot in the place, with episcopal orders.

The oldest writer[36] who distinctly a.s.serts that the poet Sedulius was an Irishman is John of Tritenheim, or Trithemius, as he is more generally called.[37] This Trithemius, Benedictine abbot of Spanheim, flourished towards the end of the fifteenth century, and was certainly a very learned man. In some of the statements, however, made in this paragraph, he is not supported by any ancient authority that we know of. It is, moreover, evident from the list of the writings of Sedulius which he gives, that he confounds the poet with the commentator on St. Paul and St. Matthew, who, as all admit, was an Irishman, but flourished nearly four centuries later than the poet. Colgan, Usher, Ware, and a host of other writers at home and abroad, have followed Trithemius, and made the poet an Irishman.

It is, however, certain that, although there is some evidence that he was of Irish birth, there is absolutely no evidence that he was a native of any other country. It was, indeed, said that the poet was a Spaniard, and Bishop of the Oretani, but Faustinus Arevalus, himself a Spaniard, and author of a very able dissertation on Sedulius, prefixed to his splendid edition of the _Christian Poets of the Fourth Century_, published at Rome in A.D. 1794, declares that love of truth compels him to admit that the story of his preaching at Toledo, and of his Spanish episcopacy, is fabulous.[38]

Let us now try to ascertain what is known with certainty of this great Christian poet, whether Irishman or not.

In the "Palatine" Codex of the Vatican Library, No. 242, there is a paragraph which states that "Sedulius was a Gentile, but learned philosophy in Italy, was afterwards converted to the Lord, and baptized by the priest Macedonius, then came to Arcadia, or according to other MSS., Achaia, where he composed this book," that is his _Carmen Paschale_.

In the Vatican Codex, No. 333, probably of the eleventh century, it is added that "St. Jerome, in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, says that Sedulius was at first a layman, learned philosophy in Italy, and afterwards, by the advice of Macedonius, taught heroic and other kinds of metre in Achaia; he wrote his books in the time of Valentinian and Theodosius," etc. Substantially the same statement is found in nearly all the twelve MSS. in the Vatican.

The scribe attributes to St. Jerome, who died in A.D. 420, that continuation of Jerome's great Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, which was really the work of Gennadius of Ma.r.s.eilles, who flourished in A.D.