CHAPTER XVIII CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER

The extraordinary and abnormal receptivity of the Irish of the fifth century, and the still more wonderful and unprecedented activity of their descendants in the sixth and following ones had almost bid fair to turn the nation into a land of apostles. This outburst of religious zeal, glorious and enduring as it was, carried with it, like all sudden and powerful movements, an element of danger. It was unfortunately destined in its headlong course to overflow its legitimate barriers and to come into rude contact with the civil power which had been established upon lines more ancient and not wholly sympathetic.

A striking passage in one of Renan's books dwells upon the obvious religious inferiority of the Greeks and Romans to the Jews, while it notes at the same time their immense political and intellectual superiority over the Semitic nation. The inferiority of the Jew in matters political and intellectual the French writer seems inclined to attribute to his abnormally developed religious sense, which, absorbed in itself, took all too little heed of the civic side of life and of the necessities of the state. Nor can it, I think, be denied that primitive Christianity in some cases took over from the Hebrews a certain[Pg 226] amount of this spirit of self-absorption and of disregard for the civil side of life and social polity. "Quand on prend les choses humaines par ce c?té," remarks Renan, "on fonde de grands prosélytismes universels, on a des ap?tres courant le monde d'un bout à l'autre, et le convertissant; mais on ne fonde pas des institutions politiques, une indépendance nationale, une dynastie, un code, un peuple."

We have already seen how the exaggerated pretensions of St. Columcille had come almost at once into opposition with the established law of the land, the law which enjoined death as the penalty for homicide at Tara, and how the priest unjustifiably took upon himself to override the civil magistrate in the person of the king.

Of precisely such a nature—only with far worse and far more enduring consequences—was the cursing of Tara by St. Ruadhan of Lothra. The great palace where, according to general belief, a hundred and thirty-six pagan and six Christian kings had ruled uninterruptedly, the most august spot in all Ireland, where a "truce of God" had always reigned during the great triennial assemblies, was now to be given up and deserted at the curse of a tonsured monk. The great Assembly or Féis of Tara, which accustomed the people to the idea of a centre of government and a ruling power, could no more be convened, and a thousand associations and memories which hallowed the office of the High-king were snapped in a moment. It was a blow from which the monarchy of Ireland never recovered, a blow which, by putting an end to the great triennial or septennial conventions of the whole Irish race, weakened the prestige of the central ruler, increased the power of the provincial chieftains, segregated the clans of Ireland from one another, and opened a new road for faction and dissension throughout the entire island.

There is a considerable amount of mystery attached to this whole transaction, and all the great Irish annalists, the "Four[Pg 227] Masters," the "Chronicon Scotorum," the Annals of Ulster, Tighearnach, and Keating, are absolutely silent upon the matter.[1] The "Four Masters," indeed, under the year 554 record "the last Féis of Tara,"[2] as does Tighearnach also; but why it was the last, or why Tara was deserted, they do not say. Yet so great a national event was infinitely too important to have been passed over in silence except for some special reason, and I cannot help thinking that it was not alluded to because the annalists did not care to recall it. The authorities for the cursing of Tara are the lost "Annals of Clonmacnois," which were translated into English by Connell Mac Geoghegan in 1627, and which give a very long and full account of the matter;[3] an Irish MS. in Trinity College, Dublin;[4] the Life of St. Ruadhan himself, in the fourteenth century (?) codex the Book of Kilkenny, now in Marsh's Library; and his life as published by the Bollandists; the ancient scholiast on Fiach's hymn on the Life of St. Patrick; a fifteenth century vellum in the British Museum, which professes to copy from the lost Book of Sligo; the Book of Right,[5] and the Book of Lismore, which last, though it turns the story into an úrsgeul, or romance, yet agrees closely in essentials with the lost "Annals of Clonmacnois." The story, as told in this manuscript, is worth producing as a specimen of how the Irish loved to turn every great historical event into an úrsgeul, seasoned with a good spice of the marvellous, and dressed up dramatically. How much of such pseudo-histories is true, how much invented for the occasion, and how much may be stock-in-trade of the[Pg 228] story-teller, is never easily determined. The story runs as follows:—

King Diarmuid's steward and spear-bearer had been ill and wasting away for a year. On his recovery he goes to the King, and asks him whether "the order of his discipline and peace" had been observed during the time of his illness. The King answered that he had noticed no breach or diminution of it. The spear-bearer said he would make sure of the King's peace by travelling round Ireland with his spear held transversely, and he would see whether the door of every liss and fortress would be opened wide enough to let the spear pass—such on the approach of the King's spear seems to have been the law—and "so shall the regimen and peace of Ireland," said he "be ascertained."

    "From Tara, therefore, goes forth the spear-bearer,[6] and with him the King of Ireland's herald, to proclaim Ireland's peace, and he arrived in the province of Connacht, and made his way to the mansion of Aedh [?] Guairè of Kinelfechin. And he at that time had round his rath a stockade of red oak, and had a new house too, that was but just built [no doubt inside the rath] with a view to his marriage feast. Now, a week before the spear-bearer's arrival the other had heard that he was on his way to him, and had given orders to make an opening before him in the palisade [but not in the dwelling].

    "The spear-bearer came accordingly, and Aedh Guairè bade him welcome. The spear-bearer said that the house must be hewn [open to the right width] before him.

    "'Give thine own orders as to how it may please thee to have it hewn,' said Aedh Guairè, but, even as he spake it, he gave a stroke of his sword to the spear-bearer, so that he took his head from off him.

    "Now at this time the discipline of Ireland was such that whosoever killed a man void of offence, neither cattle nor other valuable consideration might be taken in lieu of the slain, but the slayer must be killed, unless it were that the King should order or permit the acceptance of a cattle-price.

    [Pg 229]

    "When King Diarmuid heard of the killing he sent his young men and his executive to waste and to spoil Aedh Guairè. And he flees to Bishop Senan, for one mother they had both, and Senan the bishop goes with him to Ruadhan of Lothra, for it was two sisters of Lothra that nursed Bishop Senan, Cael and Ruadhnait were their names. But Aedh Guairè found no protection with Ruadhan, but was banished away into Britain for a year, and Diarmuid's people came to seek for him in Britain, so he was again sent back to Ruadhan. And Diarmuid himself comes to Ruadhan to look for him, but he had been put into a hole in the ground by Ruadhan, which is to-day called 'Ruadhan's Hole.' Diarmuid sent his man to look in Ruadhan's kitchen whether Aedh Guiarè were there. But on the man's going into the kitchen his eyes were at once struck blind. When Diarmuid saw this, he went into the kitchen himself, but he did not find Aedh Guiarè there. And he asked Ruadhan where he was, for he was sure he would tell him no lie.

    "'I know not where he is,' said Ruadhan, 'if he be not under yon thatch.'

    "After that Diarmuid departs to his house, but he remembered the cleric's word and returns to the recluse's cell, and he sees the candle being brought to the spot where Aedh Guairè was. And he sends a confidential servant to bring him forth—Donnán Donn was his name—and he dug down in the hiding place, but the arm he stretched out to take Aedh withered to the shoulder. And he makes obeisance to Ruadhan after that, and the two servants remained with Ruadhan after that in Poll Ruadhain. After this Diarmuid [himself] carries off Aedh Guairè to Tara."

Upon this, we are told, Ruadhan made his way to Brendan of Birr, and thence to the so-called twelve apostles of Ireland,[7] and they all followed the King and came to Tara, and they fast upon the King that night, and he, "relying on his kingly quality and on the justice of his cause, fasts upon them."[8]

    "In such fashion, and to the end of a year they continued before Tara under Ruadhan's tent exposed to weather and to wet, and they were every other night without food, Diarmuid and the clergy, fasting on each other."

After this the story goes on that Brendan the Navigator had in the meantime landed from his foreign expeditions, and[Pg 230] hearing that the other saints of Ireland were fasting before Tara, he also proceeds thither. But King Diarmuid, learning of his coming, was terrified, and consented to give up Aedh Guairè for "fifty horses, blue-eyed with golden bridles." Brendan the Voyager, fresh from his triumphs on the ocean, summons fifty seals and makes them look like horses, and guaranteeing them for a year and a quarter, hands them over to the King and receives Aedh Guairè. But when the time guaranteed was out, they became seals again, and brought their riders with them into the sea. And Diarmuid was very wroth at the deception, "and shut the seven lisses of Tara to the end that the clergy should not enter into Tara, lest they should leave behind malevolence and evil bequests."

It appears that the clerics still continued fasting upon the King, and he fasting upon them,

    "And people were assigned [by the King] to wait upon them and to keep watch and ward over them until the clergy should have accomplished the act of eating and consuming food in their presence. But on this night Brendan gave them this advice—their cowls to be about their heads and they to let their meat and ale pass by their mouths into their bosoms and down to the ground, and this they did. Word was brought to the King that the clergy were consuming meat and ale, so Diarmuid ate meat that night, but the clerics on the other hand fasted on him through stratagem.

    "Now Diarmuid's wife—Mughain was his wife—saw a dream, which dream was this, that upon the green of Tara was a vast and wide-foliaged tree, and eleven slaves hewing at it, but every chip which they knocked from it would return into its place again and adhere to it [as before], till at last there came one man that dealt the tree but a stroke, and with that single cut laid it low, as the poet spoke the lay—

    "'An evil dream did she behold
    The wife of the King of Tara of the heavy torques,
    Although it brought to her grief and woe
    She could not keep from telling it.
    A powerful stout tree did she behold,
    That might shelter the birds of Ireland,
    Upon the hill-side, smitten with axes,
    And champions hewing together at it, etc.'
    (48 lines more.)

    [Pg 231]

    "As for Diarmuid, son of Cerbhall [the King], after that dream he arose early, so that he heard the clergy chant their psalms, and he entered into the house in which they were.

    "'Alas!' he said, 'for the iniquitous contest which ye have waged against me, seeing that it is Ireland's good that I pursue, and to preserve her discipline and royal right, but 'tis Ireland's unpeace and murderousness which ye endeavour after. For God Himself it is who on such or such a one confers the orders of prince, of righteous ruler, and of equitable judgment, to the end that he may maintain his truthfulness, his princely quality, and his governance. Now that to which a king is bound is to have mercy coupled with stringency of law, and peace maintained in the sub-districts, and hostages in fetters; to succour the wretched, but to overwhelm enemies, and to banish falsehood, for unless on this hither side one do the King of Heaven's will, no excuse is accepted by him on the other. And thou, Ruadhan,' said Diarmuid, 'through thee it is that injury and rending of my mercy and of mine integrity to Godward is come about, and I pray God that thy diocese be the first in Ireland that shall be renounced, and thy Church lands the first that shall be impugned.'

    "But Ruadhan said, 'Rather may thy dynasty come to nought, and none that is son or grandson to thee establish himself in Tara for ever!'

    "Diarmuid said, 'Be thy Church desolate continually.'

    "Ruadhan said, 'Desolate be Tara for ever and for ever.'

    "Diarmuid said, 'May a limb of thy limbs be wanting to thee, and come not with thee under ground, and mayest thou lack an eye!

    "'Have thou before death an evil countenance in sight of all; may thine enemies prevail over thee mightily, and the thigh that thou liftedst not before me to stand up, be the same mangled into pieces.'

    "Said Diarmuid, 'The thing [i.e., the man] about which is our dispute, take him with you, but in thy church, Ruadhan, may the alarm cry sound at nones always, and even though all Ireland be at peace be thy church's precinct a scene of war continuously.'

    "And from that time to this the same is fulfilled."[9]

There follows a poem of 88 lines uttered by the King.

The same story in all its essential details is told in the MS.[Pg 232] Egerton 1782, a vellum of the fifteenth century, which professes to follow the lost Book of Sligo. It is quite as unbiassed and outspoken about the result of the clerics' action as the Book of Lismore. It makes Diarmuid address the clerics thus—

    "'Evil is that which ye have worked O clerics, my kingdom's ruination. For in the latter times Ireland shall not be better off than she is at this present. But, however it fall out,' said he, 'may bad chiefs, their heirs-apparent, and their men of war, quarter themselves in your churches, and may it be their [read your?] own selves that in your houses shall pull off such peoples' brogues for them, ye being the while powerless to rid yourselves of them.'"

This codex sympathises so strongly with the king that it states that one of Ruadhan's eyes burst in his head when the king cursed him. Beg mac De, the celebrated Christian prophet, is made to prophecy thus, when the king asks him in what fashion his kingdom should be after his death,

    "'An evil world,' said the prophet, 'is now at hand, in which men shall be in bondage, woman free; mast wanting; woods smooth; blossom bad; winds many; wet summer; green corn; much cattle; scant milk; dependants burdensome in every country, hogs lean, chiefs wicked; bad faith; chronic killing; a world withered, raths in number.'"

King Diarmuid died in 558, according to the "Four Masters;" it is certain he never retreated a foot from Tara, but it was probably his next successor who, intimidated at the clerics' curse and the ringing of their bells—for they circled Tara ringing their bells against it—deserted the royal hill for ever.[10]

The palace of Cletty, not far from Tara, was also cursed by St. Cairneach at the request of the queen of the celebrated Muircheartach Mór mac Earca, and deserted in consequence.[11]

[Pg 233]

Another, but probably more justifiable, instance of the clergy fasting upon a lay ruler and cursing him, was that of the notorious Raghallach (Reilly), king of Connacht, who made his queen jealous by his infidelity, and committed other crimes. The story is thus recorded by Keating—

    "The scandal of that evil deed soon spread throughout all the land and the saints of Ireland were sorrowful by reason thereof. St. Fechin of Fobar [Fore is West Meath] came in person to Raghallach to reprehend him, and many saints came in his company to aid him in inducing the prince to discontinue his criminal amour. But Raghallach despised their exhortations. Thereupon they fasted against him, and as there were many other evil-minded persons besides him in the land, they made an especial prayer to God that for the sake of an example he should not live out the month of May, then next to come on, and that he should fall by the hands of villains, by vile instruments, and in a filthy place; and all these things happened to him,"

as Keating goes on to relate, for he was killed by turf-cutters.

Sometimes the saints are found on opposite sides, as at the Battle of Cooldrevna where Columcille prayed against the High-king's arms, and Finian prayed for them; or as in the well-known case of the expulsion of poor old St. Mochuda[12] and his monks in 631 from the monastery at Rathain, where his piety and success had aroused the jealousy of the clerics of the Ui Neill, who ejected him by force, despite his malediction. It was then he returned to his own province and founded Lismore, which soon became famous.[13]

Led away by our admiration of the magnificent outburst of learning and the innumerable examples of undoubted devotion displayed by Irishmen from the sixth to the ninth century, we are very liable to overlook the actual state of society, and to read into a still primitive social constitution the thoughts and ideas of later ages, forgetting the real spirit of those early times. We must remember that St. Patrick had made no change in the social constitution of the people, and that the new religion[Pg 234] in no way affected their external institutions, and as a natural consequence even saints and clerics took the side of their own kings and people, and fought in battle with as much gusto as any of the clansmen. Women fought side by side with men, and were only exempted from military service in 590, through the influence of Columcille at the synod of Druimceat—of which synod more hereafter, and Adamnan had to get the law renewed over a hundred years later, for it had become inoperative. The monks were of course as liable as any other of the tribesmen to perform military duty to their lords, and were only exempted[14] from it in the year 804. The clergy fought with Cormac mac Culenain as late as 908 at the battle where he fell, and a great number of them were killed.[15] The clergy often quarrelled among themselves also. In 673 the monks of Clonmacnois and Durrow fought one another, and the men of Clonmacnois slew two hundred of their opponents. In 816 four hundred men were slain in a fight between rival monasteries. The clan system, in fact, applied down to the eighth or ninth century almost as much to the clergy as to the laity, and with the abandonment of Tara and the weakening of the High-kingship, the only power which bid fair to override feud and faction was got rid of, and every man drank for himself the intoxicating draught of irresponsibility, and each princeling became a C?sar in his own community.

The saints with their long-accredited exercises of semi-miraculous powers, formed an admirable ingredient wherewith to spice a historic romance, such as the soul of the Irish story-tellers loved, and they were not slow to avail themselves of it.

A passage in the celebrated history of the Boru tribute, preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, turns both Columcille and his biographer Adamnan to account in this way, by introducing dialogues between them and their contemporary[Pg 235] kings of Ireland, which are worth giving here, as they preserve some primitive traits, but more especially as an example of how the later medievalists conceived their own early saints. Aedh [Ae], the High-king of Ireland, had asked Columcille how many kings of all whom he himself had come in contact with, or had cognisance of, would win, or had won, to heaven; and Columcille answered:

    "'Certainly I know of only three, Daimín King of Oriel, and Ailill King of Connacht, and Feradach of Corkalee, King of Ossory.'

    "'And what good did they do,' said Aedh, 'beyond all other kings?'

    "'That's easy told,' said Columcille, 'as for Daimín no cleric ever departed from him having met with a refusal, and he never reviled a cleric, nor spoiled church nor sanctuary, and greatly did he bestow upon the Lord. Afterwards he went to heaven, on account of his mild dealing with the Lord's people; and the clerics still chant his litany.

    "'As for Ailill, moreover, this is how he found the Lord's clemency; he fought the battle of Cúl Conairé with the Clan Fiacrach, and they defeated him in that battle, and he said to his charioteer, "Look behind for us, and see whether the slaying is great, and are the slayers near us?"

    "'The charioteer looked behind him, and 'twas what he said:

    "'"The slaying with which your people are slain," said he, "is unendurable."

    "'"It is not their own guilt that falls on them, but the guilt of my pride and my untruthfulness," said he; "and turn the chariot for us against [the enemy]," said he, "for if I be slain amidst them (?) it will be the saving of a multitude.'

    "'Thereupon the chariot was turned round against the enemy, and thereafter did Ailill earnestly repent, and fell by his enemies. So that man got the Lord's clemency,' said Columcille.

    "'As for Feradach,[16] the King of Ossory, moreover, he was a covetous man without a conscience, and if he were to hear that a man in his territory had only one scruple of gold or silver, he would take it to himself by force, and put it in the covers of goblets and crannogues and swords and chessmen. Thereafter there came upon him an unendurable sickness. They collect round him all his treasures, so that he had them in his bed. His enemies came, the Clan Connla, after that, to seize the house on him. His sons,[Pg 236] too, came to him to carry away the jewels with them [to save them for him].

    "'"Do not take them away, my sons," said he, "for I harried many for those treasures, and I desire to harry myself on this side the tomb for them, and that my enemies may bring them away of my good will, so that the Deity may not harry me on the other side."

    "'After that his sons departed from him, and he himself made earnest repentance, and died at the hands of his enemies, and gains the clemency of the Lord.'

    "'Now as for me myself,' said Aedh, 'shall I gain the Lord's clemency?'

    "'Thou shalt not gain it on any account,' said Columcille.

    "'Well, then, cleric,' said he, 'procure for me from the Deity that the Leinster men [at least] may not overthrow me.'

    "'Well, now, that is difficult for me,' said Columcille, 'for my mother was one of them, and the Leinstermen came to me to Durrow,[17] and made as though they would fast upon me, till I should grant them a sister's son's request, and what they asked of me was that no outside king should ever overthrow them; and I promised them that too, but here is my cowl for thee, and thou shalt not be slain while it is about thee.'"

Less clement is Adamnan depicted in his interview, over a century later, with King Finnachta, who had just been persuaded by St. Molling[18] to remit the Boru tribute (then leviable off Leinster), until luan, by which the King unwarily understood Monday, but the more acute saint Doomsday, the word having both significations. Adamnan saw through the deception in a moment, and hastened to interrupt the plans of his brother saint.

    "He sought therefore," says the Book of Leinster, "the place where [king] Finnachta was, and sent a clerk of his familia to summon him to a conference. Finnachta, at the instant, busied himself with a game of chess, and the cleric said, 'Come, speak with Adamnan.'

    "'I will not,' he answered, 'until this game be ended.'

    "The ecclesiastic returned to Adamnan and retailed him this answer. Then the saint said, 'Go and tell him that in the interval[Pg 237] I shall chant fifty psalms, in which fifty is a single psalm that will deprive his children and grandchildren, and even any namesake of his, for ever of the kingdom.'[19]

    "Again the clerk accosted Finnachta and told him this, but until his game was played the King never noticed him at all.

    "'Come, speak with Adamnan,' repeated the clerk, 'and——'

    "'I will not,' answered Finnachta, 'till this [fresh] game, too, shall be finished,' all which the cleric rendered to Adamnan, who said:

    "'A second time begone to him, tell him that I will sing other fifty psalms, in which fifty is one that will confer on him shortness of life.'

    "This, too, the clerk, when he was come back, proclaimed to Finnachta, but till the game was done, he never even perceived the messenger, who for the third time reiterated his speech.

    "'Till this new game be played out I will not go,' said the King, and the cleric carried it to Adamnan.

    "'Go to him,' the holy man said, 'tell him that in the meantime I will sing fifty psalms, and among them is one that will deprive him of attaining the Lord's peace.'

    "This the clerk imparted to Finnachta, who, when he heard it, with speed and energy put from him the chess-board, and hastened to where Adamnan was.

    "'Finnachta,' quoth the saint, 'what is thy reason for coming now, whereas at the first summons thou earnest not?'

    "'Soon said,' replied Finnachta. 'As for that which first thou didst threaten against me; that of my children, or even of my namesakes, not an individual ever should rule Ireland—I took it easily. The other matter which thou heldest out to me—shortness of life—that I esteemed but lightly, for Molling had promised me heaven. But the third thing which thou threatenedst me—to deprive me of the Lord's peace—that I endured not to hear without coming in obedience to thy voice.'

    "Now the motive for which God wrought this was: that the gift which Molling had promised to the King for remission of the tribute He suffered not Adamnan to dock him of."

It would be easy to multiply such scenes from the writings of the ancient Irish. That they are not altogether eleventh or twelfth-century inventions, but either the embodiment of a[Pg 238] vivid tradition, or else, in some cases, the working-up of earlier documents, now lost, is, I think, certain, but we possess no criterion whereby we may winnow out the grains of truth from the chaff of myth, invention, or perhaps in some cases (where tribal honour is at stake) deliberate falsehood. The only thing we can say with perfect certainty is that this is the way in which the contemporaries of St. Lawrence O'Toole pictured for themselves the contemporaries of St. Columcille and St. Adamnan.
********
[1] The silence of Keating seems to me particularly strange, for he devotes a good deal of space to King Diarmuid's reign, yet he must have been perfectly well aware of the stories then current and the many allusions in vellum MSS. to the cursing of Tara.

[2] "Féis dedheanach Teamhra do deanamh la Diarmaitt righ Ereann." Tighearnach calls it "Cena postrema."

[3] Printed for the Royal Society of Antiquaries by the late Denis Murphy, S.J., Dublin, 1896. See p. 85.

[4] H., 1. 15.

[5] Pp. 53-57.

[6] He is called Aedh Baclamh here, "Bacc Lonim" in the "Life." Baclamh apparently indicates some office. I have here called him only the spear-bearer.

[7] See above, p. 196.

[8] "A niurt a fhlatha ocus a fhírinne."

[9] There is a poem ascribed to Ruadhan in the MS. marked H. 4. in Trinity College. O'Clery's Féilire na Naomh has a curious note on Ruadhan which runs thus: Ruadhan of Lothra, "he was of the race of Owen Mór, son of Oilioll Olum. A very old ancient book (sein leabhar ró aosta) as we have mentioned at Brigit, 1st of February, states that Ruadhan of Lothra was in manners and life like Matthew the Apostle."

[10] After this the High-kings of Ireland belonging to the northern Ui Neill resided in their own ancient palace of Aileach near Derry, and the High-kings of the southern Ui Neill families resided at the Rath near Castlepollard, or at Dún-na-sgiath ("the Fortress of the Shields") on the brink of Loch Ennell, near Mullingar. Brian Boru resided at Kincora in Clare.

[11] See O'Donovan's letter from Navan on Brugh na Bóinne.

[12] Also called Carthach.

[13] See above, p. 211.

[14] By Fothadh called "na Canóine" who persuaded Aedh Oirnide to release them from this duty.

[15] See "Fragments of Irish Annals" by O'Donovan, p. 210, and his note.

[16] This story is also told in the "Three Fragments of Irish Annals," p. 9.

[17] See above, p. 170.

[18] For Molling, see above, p. 209-10. The following translation is by Standish Hayes O'Grady, "Silva Gadelica," p. 422.

[19] For a description of the awful consequences of a saint's curse that make a timid lunatic out of a valliant warrior see O'Donovan's fragmentary "Annals," p. 233.