An Irish precursor of Dante

by Charles Stuart Boswell

The voyagers also perceived flocks of birds rising from out of a river, pursued by eels, otters, and black swans. These were the spirits of the damned, let out of Hell for a day’s respite on Sundays, though they were not allowed to enjoy this boon in peace, for the eels, etc., were demons that kept pursuing them. One of these birds had three beautiful rays on its breast; this was a woman who had forsaken her husband, but had brought him food when sick and in want. This notion that the damned were periodically allowed a day’s holiday[141] was generally accepted by the early Church in Ireland, as elsewhere. Sometimes, as here, this was believed to take place so often as every Sunday; by some, only on the great festivals of the Church, as Christmas Day and Easter. Our author, like several other of the Irish Churchmen, was a strict Sabbatarian, and gives to violations of the Sunday a place disproportionately large, visiting them with a severity that seems excessive. For instance, a solitary rower was rowing with a fiery spade upon a fiery river, the waves of which kept breaking over him; this was a boatman who had plied his trade on Sunday. The lurid picturesqueness of this figure, worthy of Dante, is spoiled by the disproportion between crime and punishment. A horseman bestrode a fiery horse; he had stolen his brother’s horse, and ridden him on a Sunday. There was also a black, smoky giant, carrying an iron staff as big as a mill-shaft, and flakes of fire, as big as fleeces, coming out of his throat. This was no Typhoeus, nor heresiarch, nor conqueror, the scourge of nations, but a man who had carried firewood on a Sunday; for this he now bore on his back a bundle of faggots, the load of six oxen, which would blaze up, ever and anon, when he would fling himself into the sea, ‘but it was increase of pain to him.’

Reference has already been made to the demon miller, grinding the world’s vain riches. One island was peopled by men wailing aloud as they were mangled by the fiery red beaks and talons of sable birds, while their tongues were aflame within their heads; these were dishonest smiths.

Other islands which the Ui Corra visited were variants of the earthly Paradise, being inhabited by pilgrims, solitaries, etc., like those already described.

The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Ríagla[142] is equally Christian in conception, and in some respects approximates yet more closely to the eschatology of the Fis. The men of Ross, unable to endure the tyranny of Fiacha, their chief, killed him, thereby rendering themselves liable to death. At the instance of St. Colm Cille, this doom was commuted to the old Irish punishment of exposure on the sea; and they were set adrift, sixty couples of them, in as many small boats, ‘for God to judge them.’ It was Snedgus and Mac Ríagla that were sent to bear this sentence to them, and shortly afterwards they embarked on their own account to make a pilgrimage to the East. After visiting several islands of the familiar type, they came to one whereon was a great tree, and many beautiful birds perched thereon. And ‘melodious was the music of those birds, singing psalms and canticles, praising the Lord. For they were the birds of the plain of Heaven, and neither trunk nor leaf of that tree decayed’ (trans. W. Stokes, loc. cit.). On the top of the tree sat a great bird, with a head of gold and wings of silver, who told of the Creation of the World, of the Nativity, Baptism, Passion, Resurrection, etc.; ‘and he tells tidings of Doom; and then all the birds used to beat their sides with their wings, so that showers of blood dropt out of their sides, for dread of the tidings of Doom’ (Ibid.).

After which they came to a land where they found the banished men of Ross, who were to abide there until Judgment, for they were guiltless in what they had done; Fiacha having apparently deserved his fate. ‘Good is this island,’ they said, ‘wherein we are, for in it are Elijah and Enoch, and noble is the dwelling wherein is Elijah.’ And they showed the voyagers a lake of water and a lake of fire, which should long since have come over Éire, had not St. Patrick and St. Martin been praying for the land. The travellers asked to see Enoch, but were told that he was ‘in a secret place, until we shall all go to battle on the Day of Judgment.’[143]

We might have expected to find Enoch and Elijah in the Terrestrial Paradise, in company of the bird-flocks, as in other writings, but the construction of the Imram was commonly loose. The introduction of them shows that the fusion of the national traditions with the teaching of the Church was now complete. This is equally apparent in the description of another island, on which they landed: ‘A great lofty island, and all therein was delightful and hallowed. Good was the king that abode in this island, and he was holy and righteous,’ etc. (trans. W. Stokes, loc. cit.). His dún had one hundred doors; at each door was an altar, and at each altar a priest, celebrating the Eucharist. This king and his dún again remind us of the castle of the Graal.

We have now traced, in outline, the development of the Otherworld theory in Irish legend, from its primitive conception as a Land of Cockayne, presided over by the Dagda, with his inexhaustible ale-vat and ready-roasted pigs, to its identification with the Terrestrial Paradise, though without losing its distinctive features. One step only remained to be taken before the Imram, thus modified, should pass beyond the country of its birth, and assume a prominent place in the literature of mediæval Europe. This step was taken in the group of stories—some legendary, others more or less historic, though intermingled with legendary matter—which narrated the voyages of the Irish Saints, or, rather, in that most famous example of its class which purports to give an account of the travels of St. Brendan of Clonfert, surnamed ‘the Voyager.’ So entirely does it surpass all others in popularity and influence, and especially in those circumstances which connect it with our subject, that it may be taken as the representative of its class; as, however, it is later in date of composition than the Fis Adamnáin, and even reproduces some passages of the latter, it may be left for a later section.

The authors of the Voyages of the Ui Corra, and of Snedgus and Mac Ríagla, had not only given an entirely Christian tone to the Imram, but, without abandoning the imagery of the Otherworld handed down by the national traditions, had blent therewith a number of conceptions derived through the medium of the Apocalyptic literature of the early Church from both classical and Hebraistic sources. Further, they prepared the transition from the Imram to the Fis.[144]

The Visions of the Saints figure prominently in the hagiology of Ireland as of other countries; not all of them, however, related to the Otherworld, or, in particular, treated the Otherworld as a subject in itself, and not merely as the medium for conveying some moral lesson, or for revealing the fate of an individual. Adamnán, in his Life of St. Colm Cille, one of his authentic works, states that the saint was often rewarded with angelic intercourse, and received frequent revelations concerning the fates of the good and of the wicked.[145] However, the most famous of these Visions, with the exception of that of Adamnán, were those of St. Fursa (c. 570-c. 650 A.D.), which derived additional celebrity from the mention made of them by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History.[146]