The Book-Hunter
outbreaks against the imperial government have been led by people of
Norman or Saxon descent.
Still there is no doubt, difficult as it may be to realise the idea,
that at the times with which we are dealing, Ireland enjoyed a kind of
civilisation, which enabled its princes and its priests to look down on
Pictland, and even on Saxon England, as barbarian. The Roman dominion
had not penetrated among them, but the very remoteness which kept the
island beyond the boundaries of the Empire, also kept it beyond the
range of the destroyers of the Empire, and made it in reality the
repository of the vestiges of imperial civilisation in the north.
Perhaps the difference between the two grades of civilisation might be
about the same as we could have found ten years ago between Tahiti and
New Zealand.
An extensive and minute genealogical ramification, when it is authentic,
is a condition of a pretty far advanced state of civilisation.
Abandoning the old fabulous genealogies which went back among the
Biblical patriarchs, the rigid antiquaries of Ireland find their way
through authentic sources to genealogical connections of a truly
marvellous extent. Such illustrious men as the saints can, of course, be
easily traced, as all were proud to establish connection with them;
while Columba himself and several others were men of royal descent. But
of the casual persons mentioned in the Life of Columba, Dr Reeves hunts
out the genealogy--fully as successfully, one would say, as that of any
person of the country-gentleman class in Britain, living at the
beginning of this century, could be established. There are, indeed, many
characteristics in the hagiologic literature bearing an analogy to
modern social habits so close as to be almost ludicrous; and it is not
easy to deal with these conditions of a very distant age, brought to us
as they are through the vehicle of a language which is neither classical
nor vernacular, but conventional--the corrupt Latin in which the
biographers of the saints found it convenient to write. It would appear
that when he was in Ireland, St Columba kept his carriage, and the loss
of the lynch-pin on one occasion is connected with a notable miracle. Dr
Reeves, as appropriate to this, remarks that "the memoirs of St Patrick
in the Book of Armagh make frequent mention of his chariot, and even
name his driver." It is difficult to suppose such a vehicle ever
becoming available in Iona; but there Columba seems to have been
provided with abundance of vessels, and he could send for a friend, in
the way in which MacGillicallum's "carriage," in the form of a boat, was
sent for Johnson and Boswell.
There are many other things in these books which have a sound more
familiar to us than any sense which they really convey. Here the saint
blesses the store of a "homo plebeius cum uxore et filiis"--a poor man
with a wife and family--a term expressively known in this day among all
who have to deal with the condition of their fellow-men, from the
chancellor of the exchequer to the relieving-officer. In the same
chapter we are told "de quodam viro divite tenacissimo"--of a very
hard-fisted rich fellow--a term thoroughly significant in civilised
times. He is doomed, by the way, to become bankrupt, and fall into such
poverty that his offspring will be found dead in a ditch--a fate also
intelligible in the nineteenth century. In another place we have among
the saint's suitors "plebeius pauperrimus, qui in ea habitabat regione
quae Stagni litoribus Aporici est contermina." The "Stagnum Aporicum" is
Lochaber; so here we have a pauper from the neighbourhood of Lochaber--a
designation which I take to be familiarly known at "the Board of
Supervision for the Relief of the Poor in Scotland." We are told, too,
of the saint being at a plebeian feast, and of a plebeius in the island
of Raghery quarrelling with his wife.
The thoughtful student will find a more distinguished analogy with the
habits of later civilisation in the literature of these early churchmen.
The subject of the introduction of letters into Ireland, and the very
early literature of that country, is too large to be handled here. It is
certain that in Columba's era, the middle of the sixth century, books
were written and used in Ireland. The respect paid to a book in that age
was something beyond that of the most ardent book-hunter. Many of the
most exciting of the saintly miracles have for their end the
preservation of a book in fire or in water. The custody of the Book of
Armagh, containing St Patrick's canons, was a great hereditary office;
and the princely munificence which provided the book with a suitable
case or shrine in the tenth century is recorded in Irish history.
Besides their costly shrines already referred to, these books often had
for an outer covering a bag or satchel, in which the sacred deposit was
carried from place to place. The heart must be dead to all natural
sensations that does not sympathise with Dr Reeves in the following
triumphant announcement:--
"Of leather cases the cover of the Book of Armagh is the most
interesting example now remaining. It came, together with its
inestimable enclosure, into the writer's possession at the end of 1853,
and is now lying before him. It is formed of a single piece of strong
leather, 36 inches long and 12 broad, folded in such a way as to form a
six-sided case 12 inches long, 12-3/4 broad, and 2-3/4 thick, having a
flap which doubles over in front, and is furnished with a rude lock and
eight staples, admitted through perforations in the flap, for short iron
rods to enter and meet at the lock. The whole outer surface, which has
become perfectly black from age, is covered with figures and
interlacings of the Irish pattern in relief, which appear to have been
produced by subjecting the leather, in a damp state, before it was
folded, to pressure upon a block of the whole size, having a depressed
pattern, and allowing it to remain until the impression became
indelible."
A pleasing peculiarity in the personal habits of these recluses is their
frequent communion with birds and the gentler kind of beasts. Their
legendary histories speak of these animals as apt mediums of
vaticination and miraculous intervention; but we must be content, in the
present age, to suppose that their frequent appearance, their familiar
intercourse with the saints, and the quaint and amiable incidents in
which they figure, are in reality characteristic memorials of the kindly
feelings and the innocent pursuits natural to men of gentle disposition
and retired life. Thus Columba one day gives directions to a brother to
be on the watch at a certain point in the island of Iona, for there, by
nine o'clock on that day, a certain stranger stork will alight and drop
down, utterly fatigued with her journey across the ocean. That stork the
brother is enjoined to take up gently, and convey to the nearest house,
and feed and tend for three days, after which she will take wing and fly
away to the sweet spot of her native Ireland, whence she had wandered.
And this the brother is to do because the bird is a guest from their own
beloved native land. The brother departs, and returns at the proper
time. Columba asks no questions--he knows what has taken place, and
commends the obedient piety of the brother who had sheltered and tended
the wanderer.
Another saint, Ailbhe, had a different kind of intercourse with certain
cranes. They went about in a large body, destroying the corn in the
neighbourhood, and would not be dispersed. The saint went and delivered
on oration to them on the unreasonableness of their conduct, and
forthwith, penitent and somewhat ashamed, they soared into the air and
went their way. "St Cuthbert's ducks" acquired a long celebrity. When
that reverenced ascetic went to take up his residence in the
wave-bounded solitude of the Farne Islands, he found the solan-geese
there imbued with the wild habits common to their storm-nurtured race,
and totally unconscious of the civilisation and refinement of their
kinsmen who graze on commons, and hiss at children and dogs. St
Cuthbert tamed them through his miraculous powers, and made them as
obedient and docile a flock as abbot ever ruled. The geese went before
him in regular platoons, following the word of command, and doing what
he ordered--whether it might be the most ordinary act of the feathered
biped, or some mighty miracle. Under his successors their conduct seems
to have been less regular, though certainly not less peculiar; for we
are told that they built their nests on the altar, and around the altar,
and in all the houses of the island; farther, that, during the
celebration of mass, they familiarly pecked the officiating priest and
his assistants with their bills. It is curious enough that the
miraculous education of these birds makes its appearance in a Scottish
legal or official document at the close of the fifteenth century. It is
an instrument recording an attestation to the enormous value of the down
of these renowned birds; and seems, indeed, to be an advertisement or
puff by merchants dealing in the ware, though its ponderous Latinity is
in curious contrast with the neat examples of that kind of literature to
which we are accustomed in these days.[82]
[Footnote 82: "Instrumentum super Aucis Sancti Cuthberti."--Spalding
Club.]
One of the prettiest of the stories about birds is divided between St
Serf, the founder of a monastery in Loch Leven, and St Kentigern, the
patron of Glasgow, where he is better known as St Mungo. Kentigern was
one among a parcel of neophyte boys whom the worthy old Serf, or
Servanus, was perfecting in the knowledge of the truth. Their teacher
had a feathered pet--"quaedam avicula quae vulgo ob ruborem corpusculi
rubisca nuncupatur"--a robin-redbreast, in fact, an animal whose good
fortune it is never to be mentioned without some kindly reference to his
universal popularity, and the decoration which renders him so easily
recognised wherever he appears. St Serf's robin was a wonderful bird; he
not only took food from his master's hand and pecked about him according
to the fashion of tame and familiar birds, but took a lively interest in
his devotions and studies by flapping his wings and crowing in his own
little way, so as to be a sort of chorus to the acts of the saint. The
old man enjoyed this extremely; and his biographer, with more geniality
than hagiographers usually show, sympathises with this innocent
recreation, applying the example of the bow that was not always bent, in
a manner suggestive of suspicions that he was not entirely unacquainted
with profane letters. One day, when the saint had retired to his
devotions, the boys amused themselves with his little pet; and a
struggle arising among them for its possession, the head was torn from
the body--altogether a natural incident. Thereupon, says the narrator,
fear was turned to grief, and the avenging birch--"plagas virgarum quae
puerorum gravissima tormenta esse solent"--arose terribly in their
sight. It was at this moment that an unpopular pupil, named Kentigern--a
new boy, apparently--a stranger who had not taken in good-fellowship to
the rest of the school, but was addicted to solitary meditation, entered
the guilty conclave. Their course was taken--they threw the fragments of
the bird into his hands, and bolted. St Serf enters, and the crew are
awaiting in guilty exultation the bursting of his wrath. The consecrated
youth, however, fitting the severed parts to each other, signs the
cross, raises his pure hands to heaven, and breathes an appropriate
prayer--when lo! robin lifts his little head, expands his wings, and
hops away to meet his master. In the eucharistic office of St
Kentigern's day, this event, along with the restoration to life of a