We have still other things to learn from Darlugdacha’s teachers. Those story-telling lessons held many lessons in one. In a highly inflected language, like Old Irish, to learn to tell a continuous tale was to undergo, among other things, a thorough drill in Grammar. The material of the tale was a storehouse of instruction in History and Geography. The Memory-training, which we try to combine with an awakening of the aesthetic faculties when we prescribe the memorising of poetry for our youngsters, was admirably acquired by the same means. As for “Education,” there was Character-training in those old tales that set the heart beating for noble deeds, nobly done. Character-training, too, in the reasoned patriotism they taught by showing why Ireland was a country to be loved, and how to love her. Courtesy and Dignity ever hovered before the apprentice story-teller as the ideal to be striven for. Courtesy demanded the best of him, that it might be offered to his neighbour for his neighbour’s pleasure. Dignity and Self-respect demanded the best of him, that it might be worthy of himself.
You must not go away with the idea, however, that Darlugdacha’s “Instruction” was all gained by learning to re-tell the old tales. She had her reading and writing lessons, too. I like to think that the same method was adopted with her to make her learn her letters, as was found efficacious with Saint Columbkille. Perhaps Blathnata made a cake for her—a nice cake with plenty of honey in it—and traced the alphabet on the top of it. As Darlugdacha learned to know the letters, she could make her very own of them, you see, by eating them. It may have required more than one cake to make the process of instruction complete. No matter how many were needed, I am sure Blathnata did not spare them.
At last, Darlugdacha had got beyond her alphabet cakes, and was all afire to get helping the sisters to copy the psalter. Cilldara was a small place in those days, and had no “Teach Screptra.”[5] But the books hung in their leathern satchels from hooks along the walls of the Erdam (or Sacristy) that opened off the little Church. Hither came the nuns in turn to help to make the new copies, of which the Abbess had constant need to bestow in alms on poor churches. Two or three other virgins had joined the community since Darlugdacha’s coming; and one of them, the daughter of a scribe, was particularly skilful at the work. Darlugdacha was fascinated by it. She would stand for hours at a time watching the clever pen go delicately over the vellum—and longing for the day when she, too, would sit at a desk with a quill in her right hand, and a knife in her left to keep it pointed, with her conical ink-cup fastened to her chair-arm—a fully-equipped scribe. In the meantime, she was forced to content herself with her fan-shaped, waxed tablets, on which she practised copying with a metal “style.” When the wax surface was used up, she rubbed it smooth, and began over again. Thus the little hands grew sure and steady—and, at last, one day, on an old piece of vellum, they tried their skill with the pen.
Down across the ages, from those exquisite days, fresh and beautiful as the summer dawn, there has come to us a poem of Brigid’s. It sets us in the midst of the preparations for a great Church Festival, where the Guest of Honour was to be One Who, indeed, was never absent from the midst of the white band of women whom the Oak Tree sheltered. For, was not every act of theirs a prayer? And were they not gathered together in His name? And hath He not made a promise? Nevertheless, it is fitting that, at Easter time His Resurrection be honoured, and the poor and the afflicted, His chosen representatives, be made joyful. So as the paschal moon gets nearer and nearer to its white perfecting in the East, the little hive beneath the Oak Tree grows busier. There is ale to be brewed for the faithful who shall attend the Celebration of the Passion in the neighbouring churches. There is corn to be ground in the querns, to be ready for baking into paschal cakes, or dealt out to the needy. There are candles for the altar to be made of virgin wax from the bee-hives in the nuns’ scented garden. There is store of meat to be salted and cooked for the banqueting table, spread for the poor. In the little wooden Church, blind Daria, the sacristan, is laying out her choicest vestments, taking from their places of safety the precious vessels. The altar linen, snowy from the brook, stands ready. Around His Throne are flowers and fragrant herbs.
And little Darlugdacha is flitting, like a white bird, in the midst of it all, singing Brigid’s hymn—finding, in all this preparation, its mystic significance, learning the reading of the Riddle of Life:—
I should like a great lake of ale
For the King of the Kings;
I should like the family of Heaven
To be drinking it through time eternal.
I should like the viands