Heaven is described in the same rhapsodical style as in the Fis Adamnáin, the Félire Oengusa, etc.
Another moral treatise is the Dá Brón Flatha Nime, ‘The Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven,’ i.e. the two sorrows referred to ch. 33 of the Fis Adamnáin. Here, too, Elias is represented as standing in Paradise, the Gospels in his hand, and he preaching to the birds that perch on the Tree of Life, eating its berries.[154]
5. The Fis Adamnáin
The general plan of the Fis Adamnáin is distinguished from that of the other similar writings that have come down to us by an architectonic character to which they can make no claim. The structure proper to the Imram was, in great measure, that of a framework into which a greater or less number of incidents could be fitted, according to the author’s taste, without impairing the general effect; the same, in a somewhat less degree, may be said of the Echtra, which are more nearly akin to the romance of adventure than to the epic. The early Christian writers, again, solely intent upon edification, and being for the most part men of little culture—for this species of composition, after all, was but a by-way of ecclesiastical literature—were usually content to repeat a few topics belonging to the common stock of ideas prevalent in their day, and paid but little heed to literary effect, or even to the clear conception, or orderly presentment, of their subject.[155]
Thus, in the Fis Adamnáin, we have the first serious attempt made between the Vision of Enoch and the Commedia of Dante, either to think the subject thoroughly out, or to treat it in a literary spirit: an attempt on the part of the author to construct in his own mind some distinct idea of the Otherworld, and to present his conception to his readers in a coherent form. In some respects, indeed, the construction of it is superior to that of its early predecessor, for, with due allowance made for the topographical minuteness displayed by the author of the Book of Enoch in his reproduction, in the description of Hell, of the details of his model, the Fis manifests a more complete grasp of the subject as a whole, while it gains by the omission of the voluminous discussion of things celestial and sublunary, in which the older writer indulges, and which can only encumber a work conceived with less breadth and executed with less power than Dante, and he alone, has brought to the task.
All the same, it cannot be denied that these architectonic qualities are still at a rudimentary stage, and the very fact that so moderate an exercise of constructive power should suffice to set this work, as a literary achievement, so far above all other precursors of Dante, does but enhance our appreciation of the height at which the stately edifice of his creation towers above all previous efforts.
The structural imperfections of the Fis Adamnáin are enhanced by the appearance of composite design which the work bears in its present form, being apparently made up from two distinct versions, or else having been ‘perfected’ by some redactor by the addition of other matter. The latter explanation seems to us most probable. The first twenty chapters contain a complete and consistent account of the soul’s progress from death to judgment, followed by his relegation to the place which he has merited. It is this part of the work which displays that care for construction already noticed; a great part of the details, whether of native or foreign origin, which had come to be accepted as conventional features of the Fis or sacred Imram, is here rejected, and the borrowings from the old romantic literature, though still abundant, are made duly subservient to the general design. This part, moreover, together with the peroration in chapter 32, bears testimony, by way of direct reference and otherwise, to the author’s possession of a greater erudition, and a wider culture, than were evinced by most of those who had treated of the same subject. Thus, apparently, we are entitled to conjecture that chapters 1-20, chapter 31 (probably), and chapter 32, may represent the work which originally purported, not, indeed, to have been written by Adamnán, but to contain the account of a vision seen and already related by him. If this hypothesis be correct, then the evidences of superior culture and erudition, apparent in this part of the work, and entirely consistent with what we know of Adamnán, increase the probability that it is founded upon some more or less accurate tradition of a vision actually related by him. For, to repeat what has been said on an earlier page, there is nothing but what is natural and probable in the tradition that Adamnán beheld, or composed for spiritual edification, a vision of the kind then so much in vogue, and took the occasion of a great concourse of the chief men of Ireland in order to promulgate it; while it is equally probable that a man of his culture and acquirements should have expended upon his task an originality and executive skill previously unknown, and altogether improbable that a work of one of the foremost and most famous men of his day, after being thus publicly made known, should have been left unrecorded save by the passing mention of a chronicler.
To return to the structure of the Fis: at the end of the first twenty chapters, all that was necessary, in order to complete the design, was to bring Adamnán back into Paradise, and to dismiss him with the admonition to communicate what he had seen and heard, as in chapter 31, after which the peroration in chapter 32 naturally follows, and forms a fitting conclusion to the whole. However, it would seem that the redactor, following the example frequently set by mediæval compilers, who knew not how often the half is better than the whole, and were apt to look on perfection as consisting rather in the abundance of matter than in the due disposition of it, has attempted to supplement the design of the original author by the introduction of additional details which had long ere then become matters of common form in descriptions of the Otherworld. Even so, however, it must be admitted that he has managed his transitions with more than common skill. Although the wording of chapter 20 suggests that it was the intention of the original author to represent the fate of the lost in concise but impressive terms—a plan quite in keeping with the general tone of restraint which pervades the work—it might yet have been quite consistent with his design to insert the usual description of the various torments with which the different kinds of sinners are afflicted, and such a description would follow on quite naturally in the place where it actually occurs in the existing text. But the author of this part, whether the original author or a later editor, does not rest content with such a description; he introduces what amounts to a structural alteration of the work, and that in a style wholly inconsistent with the design of the earlier part. For in that part the road has been fully traced by which the departed spirits have already reached their final habitations; now, however, their pilgrimage is resumed anew, and the familiar bridge incident appears in chapter 21, where it discharges its usual double function of an approach to the Divine Presence, and of a sieve, or winnowing fan, as it were, for separating the wheat from the chaff. Wholly consistent as this is with mediæval eschatology, it is entirely inconsistent with the general plan of the present work, whereby that separation is effected by quite other means. Minor inconsistencies occur in the purgatorial nature of several of the punishments described in this second part, for we might expect that all requirements of the kind had been fulfilled during the soul’s progress through the seven so-called Heavens. These small inconsistencies, of themselves, would count for little, and might be regarded as faults of construction on the author’s part, or as the result of the imperfect development of the purgatorial theory, which leads to similar inconsistencies in other writings of this class, where a clear distinction is not often made between a normal process of purgation in the intermediate state, and the postponement, in special cases, of the final decision; occurring as they do, they acquire a certain significance as tending to accentuate the divergence of plan in the two parts of the work.
A similar addition, attributable to the same motives, would appear to exist in the last three chapters of the work. As already suggested, chapter 32 would bring the work to a satisfactory conclusion; however, the mediæval compiler was commonly a simple-minded person; for him, as for ‘honest Diggory,’ the ‘old grouse in the gunroom’ possessed an infinite variety which age could not wither, nor custom stale, and, like a child or peasant, he objected to a familiar tale being omitted in its usual place, or being shorn of its proper incidents. The picture of Enoch and Elijah beside the Tree of Life in Paradise, surrounded by the bird-flocks of the righteous to whom Elijah preached the Gospel, had become one of the most familiar and picturesque features of the Irish Paradise; therefore a place must be found for it. The most obvious place would be that part of Heaven where, as it is, the birds are described as singing the hours in the Divine Presence, and there, we can hardly doubt, the original author would have inserted it, had he chosen to make use of the familiar image. However, it must, I think, be admitted that he exercised a wise discretion in omitting it, graceful and picturesque as it is; for he has constructed his scheme of Heaven after what must seem to us the most obvious and appropriate plan, though one which, strangely enough, found little favour with his compeers: he has made the enthroned Deity the centre of all, so that to have introduced a further group about a subordinate centre would have been to break into the design. We may therefore be grateful to the hypothetical redactor for appending the episode merely by way of a coda, without obtruding it into what would have been its proper place, but in which there was no room for it. In so doing, he may have desired to give the work a devout and edifying termination, and to close it, as it were, with a sacred voluntary.