The Charm of Gardens

by Dion Clayton Calthrop

One can picture him seated at the door of his hut eating his Acorn mash or Herb soup after a day’s work and prayer. A stout wooden spade rests by his side, the shaft of Oak worn smooth by his hands. In front of him what labours show in the ground! Huge stumps of trees that have been uprooted and dragged away; herbs he has tried to grow showing green in the heavy soil; wild flowers sweeting the air; here the beginnings of a vineyard; there the first blades of a patch of Wheat, or Oats.

In various parts of Europe were other Irish people at work sweetening the soil. Saint Gobhan near Laon, Saint Etto, at Dompierre, Saint Caidoc and Saint Fricor in Picardy, and Saint Judoc also there, Saint Fursey, at Lagny, six miles north of Paris; and a daughter of an Irish king, Saint Dympna, at Gheel, in Belgium. These are but a few of the Irish who ventured forth to save the world. Beyond all of these does Saint Fiacre appeal to us who love our gardens.

Self-denial has been called the luxury of the Saints, yet the phrase-maker would seem to such denials of unessentials as rich foods and wines, and mortifications of the flesh which a man may choose to do without any suggestion of Saintship. Here, in Saint Fiacre, we have a man whose process of purification was symbolised by his work. The uprooting of trees, the uprooting of a thousand superstitious ideas; the purifying of the soil, the cleansing of his heart; the growing of food, the sustenance for his spirit besides his body.

He leaves his native land, he becomes monk, hermit, gardener. He dwells in the wilds of a forest, one man, alone, doing no great deed one might imagine that would cause his fame to travel, living his quiet simple life shut right away from the world by leagues of forest, more buried than a man in the wilderness. For cathedral, the depth of his woods, the aisles of great trees, the tracery and windows made by boughs and leaves. For choir, the birds. He was, one would think, so utterly alone, that no step but his own ever broke the silence of the woodland glades; so isolated that no human voice but his own ever penetrated the brakes and thickets. Yet he became known.

Doubtless some hunter, a wild man, to whom the tracks in the forest were as roads, coming one day through the woods after game, burst into the clearing, and stood amazed, paused suspicious, wondering to see the little oratory, the hut, the garden all about. The hunter casts his keen eyes about, here and there, alert, scenting danger, eyeing the new place with anxious wonder, holding his spear in readiness. Then comes the Saint from his hut and calls him brother, bids him put down his spear, sit and eat.

The hunter goes; a swineherd, seeking lost droves of pigs turned loose to fatten on the acorns, comes across the place. The news filters through the country, reaches the huddled villages by the river, reaches the dwellers in the hills, the people of the forest. They come to look, to stare, to be amazed. To each Saint Fiacre offers his hospitality.

As men, drawn irresistibly by a strong personality, will throng towards a well whose water is supposed to contain some virtue, or a stone to touch which restores lost friends, so they came to test the holiness of this man of the woods, and found him good, and true, and full of peace. And they marvelled to find a garden in the wood, and, being entreated, eat of its produce, and heard the holy man preach, and saw him heal. Then the Saint was forced to build another hut for those of his visitors who came from far to consult him, and, as the crowds grew greater he was forced to go to the Bishop to ask for more land.

Saint Faron, the Bishop of Meaux, to whom all the forest belonged, knew his man. One can imagine two such men leading lofty and spiritual lives meeting in the monastery. I like to think of the Bishop as one of those thin men full of years, with a skin like parchment, his holiness shining out of his eyes, a man whose quiet voice, tuned to the silence of the monastery, breathes peace. And Fiacre, bronzed with the open air, rough with labour, with the curious eyes of the mystic, eyes that looked as if they had pierced the veil of a mystery, standing before his Bishop asking for his grant of land.

Coming from the depths of the heavy wood into the town, leaving the silence of his forest for the noise of the place, he must have felt strange. Those who met him were, I am sure, conscious of the atmosphere he carried with him, the envelope all lonely men wear, the curious reserve common to all dwellers in woods, and wilds.

The Bishop consented to the demand, and gave him his desire after a curious manner. Perhaps to test this hermit whose fame had already spread so far, perhaps to see how real were the stories he must have heard of his spiritual son, this holy gardener, he granted him as much land as he could enclose with his spade in one day.