A CAB-DRIVER IN PICCADILLY.
But these Celts, driven west by war, now began to make their own war on Europe, not with sword and shield and battle-cry, but with pilgrim’s staff, and reed pen, and the device of Christ on their hearts. Illumination, one of the marvels of monkish accomplishment, was spread throughout Europe by bands of Irish monks, who, taking the wonderful traditions of such work as “The Book of Kells,” and those works written and illuminated at Lindisfarne, went their ways from country to country spreading their culture as well as their message.
Saint Fiacre stayed a certain time in the monastery until, indeed, the voice within him calling for more solitude and for another mode of life, forced him to go to the Bishop. To him he spoke of his vocation, of those feelings within him that prompted him to become a hermit.
The good Bishop seeing in Fiacre a good intention, and perceiving doubtless the holy nature of the monk, granted him a space on his own domain, some way from the monastery, on the edge of the woods and the plain of Brie. To this place the monk repaired and began the great work of his life.
Now it is not easy for the best of men at the best of times to live solitary in a wood without becoming something of a self-conscious or morbid person. Not so with these old hermits. They seemed to have the grace of such excessive spirituality as to have been uplifted above ordinary men, and to have lost all sense of loneliness in conversation with the Saints, and in communion with God.
What finer means of reaching this exalted condition than by labouring to make a garden in the wilderness? Saint Fiacre cleared a space in the woods with his own hands, and in this space he built an oratory to Our Lady, and a hut by it wherein he dwelt. All must have been of the most primitive order; one of those beehive shaped buildings, such as still remain in Ireland, for the oratory, fashioned out of stones and mud in what is called rag-work, and most probably roofed with turf.
After the work of building he began to make his garden. It is evident that his clearing was not near the river as the fountain or well from which he drew his water is still to be seen and it is a considerable distance away.
Imagine the solitary life of this priest gardener, whose food depended entirely on the produce of the ground. To any man the silence of the woods holds a mysterious calm, a weird, haunting uneasiness. To dwellers in woods, after a time, the silence becomes full of friendly voices; the fall of Acorns; the crackling of twigs as a wild animal forces a passage through the undergrowth; the snap of trees in the frost; the shuffling of birds getting ready for the night. But here, in the wild woods of Meaux in those early times, wolves, bears, wild boars lived.
It is possible to imagine the Saint on his knees at night, the trees, dark masses round his garden, a heaven above him pitted with stars, the smoke of his breath as he prays rising like incense. And, as has been known to be the case, all wild animals fearless of him, and friendly to him in whom they see, by instinct, one who will do them no harm. As Saint Jerome laid down with the lions, as Saint Francis spoke with Brother Wolf, and Sister Lark, so Saint Fiacre must have spoken with his friends, the beasts. In the heart of a gardener lies something to which all wild nature responds.
But consider a man of that time alone in the wood, at that time when men knew so little and whose lives were full of superstitious guesses at scientific facts. And think how much more full of dread Fiacre must have been than an ordinary man, since he was one of a nation to whom fairies and goblins of every kind are daily actualities. Think of the Saint seeing his own face daily reflected in the well as he drew his water; think of the mysterious quality of water in lonely wells when it seems now to be troubled by unseen hands, now to lift a clear smiling face to the sky. He must be a mystic and a man filled with a simple goodness who can garden in a wilderness like this.