The crowds of saints who come sometimes swarming in on a single day to these teeming volumes, give one an almost oppressive notion of the quantity of goodness that must have, after all, existed in this wicked world. The labours of the Bollandists, not only in searching through all available literature, but in a special correspondence established with their Jesuit brethren throughout the world, are absolutely astounding. Their conscientious minuteness is wonderful; and many a one who thinks he is master of the ecclesiastical lore of his own parish, which he has made his specialty, has been petrified to find what he thought his discoveries all laid down with careful precision as matters of ordinary knowledge in some corner of these mighty volumes. The Bollandists obtained their information from the spot, and it is on the spot that this kind of literature must be worked out. A thoroughly accomplished antiquary, working within a limited district, will thus bring forth more full and satisfactory results, so far as they go, than even the Bollandists have achieved, and hence the great value of the services of the book clubs to hagiology.
The writer of the letters bearing the signature "Veritas," in all the newspapers, would, of course, specially object to the resuscitation of this class of literature, "because it is full of fabulous accounts of miracles and other supernatural events which can only minister to credulity and superstition." But even in the extent and character of this very element there is a great significance. The size of a current falsehood is the measure of the size of the human belief that has swallowed it, and is a component part of the history of man.
The best critical writers on ancient history have agreed not to throw away the cosmogony and the hierology of Greece. It is part of Grecian history that the creed of the people was filled with a love of embodied fancies, so graceful and luxuriant. No less are the revel rout of Valhalla part of the virtual history of the Scandinavian tribes. But the lives of our saints, independently altogether of the momentous change in human affairs and prospects which they ushered in, have a substantial hold on history, of which neither the classical nor the northern hierology can boast. Poseidon and Aphrodite, Odin and Freya, vanish into the indefinite and undiscoverable at the approach of historical criticism. But separately altogether from their miracles, Cuthbert and Ninian, Columba and Kentigern, had actual existences. We know when they lived and when they died. The closer that historical criticism dogs their steps, the clearer it sees them, and the more it knows about their actual lives and ways. Even if they were not the missionaries who introduced Christianity among us,—as men who, in the old days before Britain became populous and affluent in the fruits of advanced civilisation, trod the soil that we tread, it would be interesting to know about them—about the habitations they lodged in, the garments they wore, the food they ate, the language they spoke, their method of social intercourse among each other, and the sort of government under which they lived.
That by investigation and critical inquiry we can know more of these things than our ancestors of centuries past could know, is still a notion comparatively new which has not been popularly realised. The classic literature in which our early training lies has nothing in it to show us the power of historical inquiry, and much to make us slight it. The Romans, instead of improving on the Greeks, fell in this respect behind them. Father Herodotus, credulous as he was, was a better antiquary than any who wrote in Latin before the revival of letters. Occupied entirely with the glory of their conquests, and blind to the future which their selfish tyranny was preparing for them, the Romans were equally thoughtless of the past, unless it were exaggerated and falsified into a narrative to aggrandise their own glory. Their authors abdicated the duty of leaving to the world the true narrative of the early struggles and achievements out of which the Republic and the Empire arose. It is easy to be sceptical at any time. We can cut away Romulus and Remus from accepted history now, hundreds of years after the Empire has ceased to govern or exist. But the golden opportunity for sifting the genuine out of the fabulous has long passed away. It is seldom possible to construct the infant histories of departed nationalities. The difference between the facilities which a nation has for finding out its own early history, and those which strangers have for constructing it when the nationality has allowed its deathbed to pass over without the performance of that patriotic task, is nearly as great as a man's own facilities for writing the history of his youth, and those of the biographer who makes inquiries about him after he is buried.
We are becoming wiser than the Romans in this as in other matters, and are constructing the infant histories of the various European nations out of the materials which each possesses. The biographies of those saints or missionaries who first diffused the light of the Gospel among the various communities of the Christian north, form a very large element in these materials; and no wonder, when we remember that the Church possessed all the literature, such as it was, of the age. In applying, however, to the British Empire, this new source of historical information, there arose the difficulty that it was chiefly supplied from Ireland. If all hagiology were under a general suspicion of the fabulous, Irish history was known to be a luxuriant preserve of fables, and these causes of dubiety being multiplied by each other in the mind, it seemed almost impossible to obtain a hearing for the new voice. In fact, during a long period the three nations were engaged in a competition which should carry its history through the longest track of fictitious glory, and this was a kind of work in which Ireland beat her neighbours entirely. Hence, when all were pressing pretty close upon the Deluge, Ireland took the leap at once and cleared that gulf. As a fairish record of these successful efforts, I would recommend to the reader's notice a very well-conditioned and truly learned-looking folio volume, called "The General History of Ireland, collected by the learned Jeffrey Keating, D.D., faithfully translated from the original Irish Language, with many curious Amendments taken from the Psalters of Tara and Cashel, with other authentic Records, by Dermod O'Connor, Antiquary to the Kingdom of Ireland." Opposite to the title-page is a full-length portrait of Brian Boroomh, whose fame has been increased of late years by the achievements of his descendant in the cabbage-garden. The monarch is in full burnished plate armour, with scarf and surcoat—all three centuries at least later in fashion than the era attributed to him. But that is a trifle. It would involve much hard and useless work to make war on the anachronisms of historical portraits, and we are not to judge of historical works by their engraved decorations. Here, however, the picture is sober truth itself to what the inquiring reader finds in the typography. After the descriptive geographical introduction common in old histories, the real commencement comes upon us in this form:—
"Of the first invasion of Ireland before the Flood!" "Various," the author tells us, "are the opinions concerning the first mortal that set a foot upon this island. We are told by some that three of the daughters of Cain arrived here, several hundred years before the Deluge. The white book, which in the Irish is called Leabhar Dhroma Sneachta, informs us that the oldest of these daughters was called Banba, and gave a name to the whole kingdom. After these, we are told that three men and fifty women arrived in the island; one of them was called Ladhra, from whom was derived the name of Ardladhan. These people lived forty years in the country, and at last they all died of a certain distemper in a week's time. From their death, it is said that the island was uninhabited for the space of an hundred years, till the world was drowned. We are told that the first who set foot upon the island were three fishermen that were driven thither by a storm from the coast of Spain. They were pleased with the discovery they had made, and resolved to settle in the country; but they agreed first to go back for their wives, and in their return were unfortunately drowned by the waters of the Deluge at a place called Tuath Inbhir. The names of these three fishermen were Capa, Laighne, and Luasat. Others, again, are of opinion that Ceasar, the daughter of Bith, was the first that came into the island before the Deluge.... When Noah was building the ark to preserve himself and his family from the Deluge, Bith, the father of Ceasar, sent to desire an apartment for him and his daughter, to save them from the approaching danger. Noah, having no authority from Heaven to receive them into the ark, denied his request. Upon this repulse, Bith Fiontan, the husband of Ceasar, and Ladhra her brother, consulted among themselves what measures they should take in this extremity."
The result was, that, like the Laird of Macnab, they "built a boat o' their ain," but on a much larger scale, being a fair match with the ark itself. But justice should be done to every one. The learned Dr Keating does not give us all this as veritable history; on the contrary, being of a sceptical turn of mind, he has courage enough to stem the national prejudice, and throw doubt on the narrative. He even rises up into something like eloquent scorn when he discusses the manner in which some antediluvian annals were said to be preserved. Thus:—
"As for such of them who say that Fiontan was drowned in the Flood, and afterwards came to life, and lived to publish the antediluvian history of the island—what can they propose by such chimerical relations, but to amuse the ignorant with strange and romantic tales, to corrupt and perplex the original annals, and to raise a jealousy that no manner of credit is to be given to the true and authentic chronicles of that kingdom?"
I shall quote no more until after the doctor, having exhausted his sceptical ingenuity about the antediluvian stories, finds himself again on firm ground, prepared to afford his readers, without any critical misgivings, "an account of the first inhabitants of Ireland after the Flood." He now tells us with simple and dignified brevity that "the kingdom of Ireland lay waste and uninhabited for the space of three hundred years after the Deluge, till Partholanus, son of Seara, son of Sru, son of Easru, son of Framant, son of Fathochda, son of Magog, son of Japhet, son of Noah, arrived there with his people." From such a patriarchal nomenclature the reader of Keating is suddenly introduced to a story of domestic scandal, in which a "footman" and a "favourite greyhound" make their frequent appearance. Then follow many great epochs—the arrival of the Firbolgs, the dynasty of the Tuatha de Danans, with revolutions and battles countless, before we come to the commencement of a settled dynasty of kings, of whom more than ninety reigned before the Christian era. It is, after all, more sad than ridiculous to remember that within the present generation many historians believed not only what Keating thus tells as truth, but also what he ventured to doubt; and if the English antiquaries, according to their wont, called for records,—did these not exist abundantly, if they could be got at, in those authentic genealogies, which were from time to time adjusted and collated with so much skill and scrupulous accuracy by the official antiquaries who met in the Hall of Tara? The reader unacquainted with such an out-of-the-way and rather weedy corner of literature, may think this vague exaggeration; and I shall finish it by quoting the latest printed, so far as I know, of the numerous solemn and methodical statements about the manner in which the records of these very distant matters were authenticated.
"When the said princes got the kingdom into their hands, they assigned large territories to their antiquaries and their posterity to preserve their pedigree, exploits, actions, &c.; and so very strict they were on this point, that they established a triennial convention at Tara, where the chief kings of Ireland dwelt, where all the antiquaries of the nation met every third year to have their chronicles and antiquities examined before the king of Ireland, the four provincial kings, the king's antiquary-royal, &c.; the least forgery in the antiquary was punished with death, and loss of estate to his posterity for ever—so very exact they were in preserving their venerable monuments, and leaving them to posterity truly and candidly; so that even at this day (though our nation lost estate and all almost) there is not an ancient name of Ireland, of the blood-royal thereof descended, but we can bring, from father to father, from the present man in being to Adam—and I, Thaddy O'Roddy, who wrote this, have written all the families of the Milesian race from this present age to Adam."[80]