CHAPTER XXXIII FROM CLONTARF TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST

Brian, semi-usurper though he was, was in every sense a great statesman as well as a great warrior. He found almost every seat of learning in ruins, and every town and palace in Ireland a shattered wreck. Before he died he had gone far towards restoring them. He rebuilt the monasteries, re-erected the churches, refounded the schools. "He sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge," says the history from which we have been quoting; but the schools had been hopelessly broken up, the scribes had perished, the books—"the countless hosts of the illuminated books of the men of Erin"—had been burned and "drowned." Hence he found himself obliged to despatch his emissaries and the few men of learning who had survived that awful time, "to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because," says the history,

    "their writings and their books in every church and in every sanctuary where they were, were burnt and thrown into water by the plunderers from beginning to end [of their invasions], and Brian himself gave the price of learning, and the price of books, to every one separately who went on this service." "By him were erected also noble churches and sanctuaries in Erin ... many works also, and repairs were made by him. By him were erected the church of Cell Dálua[1] and the church of Inis Cealtra, and the round tower[Pg 444] of Tuam Gréine, and many other works in like manner. By him were made bridges and causeways and high roads. By him were strengthened also the dúns and fortresses and islands and celebrated royal forts of Munster.... The peace of Erin was proclaimed by him, both of churches and people, so that peace throughout all Erin was made in his time. He fined and imprisoned the perpetrators of murders, trespass, robbery, and war. He hanged and killed and destroyed the robbers and thieves and plunderers of Erin.... After the banishment of the foreigners out of all Erin and after Erin was reduced to a state of peace, a single woman came from Torach in the north of Erin to Clíodhna in the south of Erin, carrying a ring of gold on a horse-rod, and she was neither robbed nor insulted."[2]

The bardic schools began to revive again, for the bards too had felt the full pressure of the invasion, their colleges had been broken up, and many of themselves been slain. One aim of the Norsemen was to destroy all learning. "It was not allowed," writes Keating, "to give instruction in letters." ... "No scholars, no clerics, no books, no holy relics, were left in church or monastery through dread of them. Neither bard nor philosopher nor musician pursued his wonted profession in the land."

The eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, witnessed a great revival of art and learning. Indeed, from the reign of Brian until the coming of the Normans, Irish metal-work, architecture, and letters flourished wonderfully. It is from this brief period of comparative rest that the three most important relics of Celtic literature now in the world date, the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the Book of Leinster, and the Book of Hymns. The eleventh and twelfth centuries produced also many men of literature, including the annalist Tighearnach who was Abbot of Clonmacnois and died in[Pg 445] 1088; and Dubdaléithe, Archbishop of Armagh, who died in 1065, who wrote Annals of Ireland which are now lost, but which are quoted both in the Annals of Ulster and in the "Four Masters." The greatest scholar, chronologist, and poet of this period is unquestionably Flann, the fear-léighinn or head-teacher of the school of Monasterboice, who died in 1056. Though he is called Flann Mainstreach, or Flann of the Monastery, he was really a layman—one proof out of many, that the schools and colleges which grew up round religious institutions were as much secular as theological. He composed a valuable series of synchronisms, in which he synchronised the kings of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, and the Roman emperors, with the kings of Ireland, in parallel columns century by century, and sums up the most important portions of his teaching in a poem of some twelve hundred lines intended evidently as a class-book for his pupils. A piece of more value is one which synchronises the reigns of the Irish monarchs with those of the Irish provincial kings and the kings of Scotland, from the time of King Laeghaire who received St. Patrick, down to the death of Murtough O'Brien in 1119, these later years having been completed by some other hand.

No fewer than two thousand lines of Flann's poetry were copied into the Book of Leinster less than a hundred years after his own death, and there are nearly as many more in other manuscripts. They are, however, though composed in elaborate metres, anything but creative and imaginative poems. The most of them consist of annals or history versified, evidently with the intention of being committed to memory, because the great ollamhs like Flann were really rather historians and philosophers than what we call poets, and they used their metrical art, very often though not always, to enshrine their knowledge. There is, however—except to the historian—nothing particularly inspiriting in a poem of 204 lines on the monarchs of Erin and kings of Meath who are descended from[Pg 446] Niall of the Nine Hostages, giving the names, length of reign, and manner of death of each, despite the undoubted skill with which the technical difficulties of a thorny metre are overcome.[3] Some of his pieces, however, are of more living interest, as his poem on the history of Oileach or Ailech, the palace of the O'Neills near Derry, in which he takes us to the time of the Tuatha De Danann, and in his poem on the battles fought by the Kinel Owen. Indeed as O'Curry well puts it,

    "Many a name lying dead in our genealogical tracts and which has found its way into our evidently condensed chronicles and annals, will be found in these poems connected with the death or associated with the brilliant deeds of some hero whose story we would not willingly lose; while, on the other hand, many an obscure historical allusion will be illustrated and many an historical spot as yet unknown to the topographer will be identified, when a proper investigation of these and other great historical poems preserved in the Book of Leinster, shall be undertaken as part of the serious study of the history and antiquities of our country."[4]

This summing-up of O'Curry's as to the poems of Flann, is one which may be also applied to several of his contemporaries and successors, such as Coleman O'Seasnan who died in 1050, one of whose poems on the kings of Emania and of Ulster contains 328 lines; Giolla Caomhghin [Gilla Keevin], who died in 1072, some thirteen or fourteen hundred lines of whose poetry has been preserved; Tanaidhe O'Mulconry, who died in 1136; Giolla Moduda O'Cassidy, who died in 1143, and whose poems, still extant, amount to nearly nine hundred lines; and[Pg 447] Giolla-na-naomh O'Dunn who died in 1160, and of whom we still possess fourteen hundred verses.[5]

The compositions of two rather earlier poets, Erard mac Coisé [C?sha] and Cuan O'Lochain possess more interest. They died in 1023 and 1024 respectively. Mac Coisé's four surviving poems and his prose allegory are all of great interest. As for Cuan O'Lochain, he was chief poet of Erin in his day, and according to Mac Echagain's "Annals of Clonmacnois" and an entry in the Book of Leinster, he and a cleric named Corcran were elected to govern Ireland during the interregnum which succeeded the death of King Malachy, who quietly reassumed, after the death of Brian Boru, the High-kingship of which that monarch had deprived him. This is a convincing proof of the honour attached to the office of "ollamh of all Ireland."

One of O'Lochain's pieces is of special value, because it describes and names every chief building, monument, rath, and remarkable spot in and around Tara, both those erected in Cormac mac Art's time and those added afterwards; both those which were in ruins when the poet wrote, and those which had been described by former authors from the time of Cormac till his own.[6] Another poem of his is on the geasa [gassa] or tabus of the king of Ireland, and on his prerogatives. It was tabu for him to let the sun rise on him when in bed in the plains of Tara, or for him to alight on a Wednesday on the plain of Bregia, or to traverse the plain of Cuillenn after sunset, or to launch his ship on the first Monday after May Day, etc. Another is a beautiful poem on the origin of the river Shannon, called from a lady Sinann, who ventured near Connla's well, a thing tabu to a female—to steal the nuts of knowledge. There grew nine splendid mystical hazel trees[Pg 448] around this well, and they produced the most beautiful nuts of rich crimson colour, and as these lovely nuts, filled full with all that was loveliest and most refined in literature, poetry, and art, dropped off their branches into the well, they raised a succession of red shining bubbles. The salmon at the sound of the falling nuts darted forward to eat them and afterwards made their way down the river, their lower side covered with beautiful crimson spots from the effect of the crimson nuts. Whoever could catch and eat these salmon were in their turn filled with the knowledge of literature and art, for the power of the nuts had to some extent passed into the fish that eat them. These were the celebrated "eó feasa" [yo fassa], or salmon of knowledge, so frequently alluded to by the poets. To approach this well was tabu to a woman, but Sinann attempted it, when the well rose up and drowned her, and carried her body down in a torrent of water to the river which was after her called Shannon.

Altogether about 1,200 lines of Cuan O'Lochain's poetry have been preserved.[7] It would be useless for our purpose to go more minutely into the history of those pre-Norman poets. It is not the known poetry of early Irish poets which, as a rule, is of most interest to the purely literary student, but rather the unknown and the traditional.

We must now take a glance at the Irish of this later period upon the Continent.

Those brilliant names in the history of European scholarship who distinguished themselves under Charlemagne, his son, and his grandsons, Clemens, Dicuil, and Scotus Erigena, who all taught in the Court schools, Dungal who taught in Pavia, Sedulius who worked in Lüttich, Fergal, or Virgil who ruled in Salzburg, and Moengal, the teacher of St. Gall, were[Pg 449] not altogether without successors. It is true that Ireland's great mission of instruction and conversion came to a close with the eleventh century, yet for two centuries more, driven by that innate instinct for travel and adventure which was so strong within them, that it resembled a second nature, we find Irish monks creating new foundations on the Continent, especially in Germany. One of the most noteworthy of these was a monk from the present Donegal, Muiredach mac Robertaigh, who assumed the Latin name of Marianus Scotus, or Marian the Irishman. In 1076 he had succeeded in establishing an Irish monastery at Ratisbon, or, as the Germans call it, Regensburg, the fame of which rapidly spread, and attracted to it many of his countrymen from Ulster, so many, that the parent monastery failed to accommodate them; and a branch house, that of St. Jacob, was completed in 1111. From these points Irish monks penetrated in all directions. Frederick Barbarossa, in 1189, on his way from the Crusades, founded even at Skribentium, in what is now Bulgaria, a monastery with an Irish abbot. About the same time the Irish abbots of Ratisbon are found writing to King Wratislaw of Bohemia to facilitate the passage of their emissaries into Poland. Under the influence of these two Irish houses, St. James of Ratisbon and St. Jacob, quite a number of other Irish monasteries were founded, that of Wurzburg in 1134, Nürnberg in 1140, Constanz in 1142, St. George in Vienna in 1155, Eichst?dt in 1183, St. Maria in Vienna in 1200.

These Irish monks who, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries left the north of Ireland and thus planted themselves in Germany, were, says Zimmer, worthy successors of those apostles and scholars who laboured from the seventh to the tenth century in France, Switzerland, and Burgundy, "full of religious zeal, piety, sobriety, and a genuine love of earning."[8] A chronicle of the monastery of Ratisbon,[Pg 450] written in 1185, states that the greater part of all the existing documents belonging to the different Irish monasteries which sprang from it had been written by Marianus Scotus himself. A specimen, writes Zimmer, of his beautiful script and the remarkable rapidity of his work may be seen at the Court Library of Vienna, where is preserved a copy of St. Paul's Epistles in 160 sheets, written by him in 1079, between March 23rd and May 17th. Very many of the monks—Malachias, Patricius, Maclan, Finnian, and others—who came to these monasteries from Ireland brought books with them which they presented to the German monasteries. The century which succeeded the Battle of Clontarf was the most flourishing period of the Irish monks in Germany. In the thirteenth century their influence visibly declines. Once the English had commenced the conquest of Ireland the monasteries ceased to be recruited by men of sanctity and learning, but were resorted to by men who sought rather material comfort and a life of worldly freedom.[9] The result was that towards the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century most of the Irish establishments in Germany came to an end, being either made over to Germans, like of those of Vienna and Würzburg, or else altogether losing their monastic character like that of Nuremberg.

As for the parent monastery, that of St. James of Ratisbon, its fate was most extraordinary, and deserves to be told at greater length. It had, of course, always been from its foundation inhabited by Irish monks alone, and was known as the Monasterium Scotorum, or Monastery of the Irishmen. But when in process of time the word Scotus became ambiguous, or, rather, had come to be almost exclusively[Pg 451] applied to what we now call Scotchmen,[10] the Scotch prudently took advantage of it, and claimed that they, and not the Irish, were the real founders of Ratisbon and its kindred institutions, and that the designation monasterium Scotorum proved it, but that the Irish had gradually and unlawfully intruded themselves into all these institutions which did not belong to them. Accordingly it came to pass by the very irony of fate—analogous to that which made English writers of the last century claim Irish books and Irish script as Anglo-Saxon—that the great parent monastery of St. James of Ratisbon was actually given up to the Scotch by Leo X. in 1515, and all the unfortunate Irish monks there living were driven out! The Scotch, however, do not seem to have made much of their new abode, for though the monastery contained some able men during the first century of its occupation by them—

    "It exercised," says Zimmer, "no influence worth mentioning upon the general cultivation of the German people of that region, and may be considered but a small contributor towards medi?val culture in general, for the only share the Scotch monks can really claim in a monument like that of the Church of St. James of Ratisbon, is the fact of their having collected the gold for its erection from the pockets of the Germans. In comparison with these how noble appear to us those apostles from Ireland, of whom we find so many traces in different parts of the kingdom, of the monks from the beginning of the seventh to the end of the tenth century"!

This monastery was finally secularised in 1860.
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[1] Killaloe, Inniscaltra, and Tomgraney.

[2] On this episode Moore wrote his melody, "Rich and rare were the gems she wore." An Irish poet contemporaneous with this event celebrated it less poetically—

"O Thoraigh co Clíodna cais
Is fail óir aice re a h-ais
I ré Bhriain taoibh-ghil nár thim
Do thimchil aoin-bhen Eirinn."

[3] Compare the first verse in Deibhidh metre—

"Midhe Maigen Chlainne Cuind,
Cáin-fhorod Clainne Neill Neart-luind,
Cride [Cain] Banba Bricce,
Mide Magh na Mór-chipe."

I.e., "Meath, the place of the children of Conn, beautiful house of the children of Niall, strength-renowned. The heart of celebrated Erin, Meath, the place of the great battalions."

[4] O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. ii, p. 156.

[5] There are a great number of other poets of whom only one or two poems survive, and others are mentioned as great poets by the annalists, of whom not a line has come down to us.

[6] This piece has been published at full length in Petrie's "History and Antiquities of Tara."

[7] There are two different etymologies of the name in a poem on the river Shannon of several hundred verses, made by a native of the county Roscommon in the eventful year 1798. There is also a different version of the origin of the river in a folk tale which I recovered this year from a native of the same county.

[8] "Sie waren noch würdige Epigonen jener Glaubensboten und Gelehrten des 7-10 Jahrhunderts, die wir im Frankreich kennen lernten; voll Glaubenseifer, Fr?mmigkeit, Enthaltsamkeit und Sinn für Studien" ("Preussisches Jahrbuch," January, 1887).

[9] "Propter abundantiam et propter liberam voluntatem vivendi," quotes Zimmer.

[10] F. F. Warren, quoted by Miss Stokes in her "Six Months in the Apennines," gives a list of twenty-nine Irish monasteries in France, and eighteen in Germany and Switzerland, with many more in the Netherlands and in Italy. Numberless others founded by the Irish passed into foreign hands.