We can see in Colum of the Churches the very spirit of turbulence and adventure, the fierce impetuosity and readiness for dispute, which led to the contests between the chieftains of Ireland, the wars between province and province, often between valley and valley. It is the same spiritual energy, working itself out in another way, transmuted by the sacred fire into a divine mission. In the same way the strong will of Meave, the romantic power of Deirdré and Grania, transmuted to ideal purposes, was the inspiration of Saint Brigid and so many like her, who devoted their powers to the religious teaching of women.
We should doubtless fail utterly to understand the riddle of history, were we to regret the wild warring of these early times as a mere lamentable loss of life, a useless and cruel bloodshed. We are too much given to measuring other times and other moods of the soul by our own, and many false judgments issue from this error. Peaceful material production is our main purpose, and we learn many lessons of the Will embodied in the material world when we follow this purpose honestly. But before our age could begin, it was necessary for the races to come to personal consciousness. This end seems everywhere to have been reached by a long epoch of strife, the contending of man against man, of tribe against tribe. Thus were brought to full consciousness the instinct of personal valor, personal honor and personal readiness to face death.
Only after this high personal consciousness is kindled can a race enter the wider path of national life, where vivid and intense individuals unite their forces to a common end, reaching a common consciousness, and holding their power in common for the purposes of all. After the lessons of fighting come the lessons of work. For these lessons of work, for the direct touch with the everlasting Will gained in all honest work, our own age is to be valued, far more than for the visible and material fruits which that work produces.
In like manner the old epoch of war is to be esteemed for the lessons it taught of high valor, sacrifice, heroic daring. And to what admirable ends these same qualities may tend we can see in a life like that of Colum Kill, "head of the piety of the most part of Ireland and Scotland after Patrick."
Yet the days of old were grim enough to live in. Let this record of some half-century later testify. It is but one year culled from a long red rank of years. We give the Chronicler's own words: "645: The sixth year of Conall and Ceallac. Mac Laisre, abbot of Bangor, died on May 16. Ragallac son of Uatac, King of Connacht, was killed by Maelbrigde son of Motlacan, of which was said:
"Ragallac son of Uatac was pierced on the back of a white
steed;
Muiream has well lamented him; Catal has well avenged him.
Catal is this day in battle, though bound to peace in the
presence of kings;
Though Catal is without a father, his father is not without
vengeance.
Estimate his terrible revenge from the account of it related:
He slew six men and fifty; he made sixteen devastations;
I had my share like another in the revenge of Ragallac,--
I have the gray beard in my hand, of Maelbrigde son of Motlacan."
These are evidently the very words of one who fought in the battle. Nor need this in any way surprise us, for we have far older Chronicles set down year by year in unbroken record. The matter is easy to prove. The Chronicles of Ulster record eclipses of the sun and moon as early as 495,--two years after Saint Patrick's death. It was, of course, the habit of astronomers to reckon eclipses backwards, and of annalists to avail themselves of these reckonings. The Venerable Bede, for example, has thus inserted eclipses in his history. The result is that the Venerable Bede has the dates several days wrong, while the Chronicles of Ulster, where direct observation took the place of faulty reckoning, has them right, to the day and hour. It is only in quite modern times that we have reached sufficiently accurate knowledge of the moon's movements to vindicate the old Ulster Annalists, who began their work not less than a hundred and fifty years before the battle we have just recorded.
Nor should we exaggerate the condition of the time, thinking of it as altogether given over to ravaging and devastation. Even though there were two or three expeditions and battles every year, these would only affect a small part of the whole country. Over all the rest, the tending of cattle in the glades of the forest, the sowing and reaping of wheat and oats, the gathering of fruit and nuts, continued in quiet contentment and peace. The young men practiced the arts of war and exercised themselves in warlike games. The poets sang to them, the heralds recounted the great doings of old, how Cuculain kept the ford, how Concobar thirsted in his heart for Deirdré, how the son of Cumal went to war, how golden-tongued Ossin was ensnared by the spirits. The gentle life of tillage and the keeping of cattle could never engage the whole mental force of so vigorous a race. What wonder, then, that, when a chieftain had some real or imagined wrong to avenge, or some adventure to propose,--what wonder that bold spirits were ever ready to accompany him, leaving the women to their distaffs and the tending of children and the grinding of corn? Mounting their horses, they rode forth through the woods, under the huge arms of the oak-trees; along the banks of swift-gliding rivers, through passes of the lowering hills. While still in familiar territory, the time of the march was passed in song and story. Then came increased precaution, and gradually heightened pulses marked the stages of the way. The rival chieftain, warned by his scouts and outlying tribesmen, got word of their approach, and hastily replenishing his granaries and driving the cattle into the great circle of his embankments, prepared to meet the coming foe. Swords, spears, bows, arrows were the arms of both sides. Though leather tunics were common, coats of mail came only at a later date. The attackers under cover of the night sped across the open ground before the fort, and tried to storm the fortress, the defenders meanwhile showering down keen-pointed arrows on them from above. Both parties, under the chieftains' guidance, fought fiercely, in a fever of excitement, giving no heed to wounds, seeing nothing but the foe and the battlements to be scaled. Then either a successful sortie broke the ranks of the assailants and sent them back to their forest camp in wild disorder, or, the stockade giving way, the stormers swept in like a wave of the sea, and all was chaos and wild struggle hand to hand. Whatever the outcome, both sides thought of the wild surge of will and valor in that hour as the crowning event of their lives.
Meanwhile, within the quiet enclosures of the monasteries and religious schools, the spirit of the time was working with not less fervor, to invisible and ideal ends. At Bangor, on the neck of the northern Ards; at Moville, where Lough Foyle spreads its inland sea; at Saul, where the first Messenger won his first convert; at Devenish Island amid the waters of Lough Erne; at Monasterboice in the plain of Louth; at Grlendalough, among the solemn hills of Wicklow; at Kildare, beneath the oak-woods; at Durrow, amid the central marshes, and many another ancient seat of learning, the way of wisdom and holiness was trod with gladness. Latin had been taught since the early days of the Message; the native tongue of Ireland, consecrated in the hymns of St. Patrick and the poems of St. Colum of the Churches, was the language in which all pupils were taught, the modern ministrant to the classical speech of Rome. Nor were the Scriptures alone studied. Terence, Virgil, Ovid, the Augustans and the men of the silver age, were familiar in the Irish schools; and to these Latin writers were soon added the Greeks, more especially--as was natural--the Greek Fathers, the religious philosophers, and those who embodied the thought and controversies of the early Christian centuries. To Greek, Hebrew was added, so that both Old and New Testaments were known in their proper tongues. About the time when "Ragallac son of Uatac was pierced on the back of a white steed," Saint Camin in his island school at Inis Caltra, where red mountains hem in Lough Derg of the Shannon, was writing his Commentary on the Psalms, recording the Hebrew readings on the margin of the page. A few years before that battle, in 634, Saint Cummian of Durrow, some thirty miles to the east of Camin's Holy Island, wrote to his brother, the Abbot of Iona in the northern seas, quoting Latin writers sacred and secular, as well as Origen, Cyril and Pachomius among the Greeks. The learned man discusses the astronomical systems of the Mediterranean world, giving the names of months and cycles in Hebrew, Greek and Egyptian, and telling of his researches into the true time of Easter, while on a journey to Italy and Rome. This letter, which has come down to our days, is first-hand testimony to the learning of the early Irish schools.