The literature of the Highlanders

by Nigel MacNeill

The loss of heaven, in chains of darkness bound.”

Further remarks on the poetry attributed to Columba will be found in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV.
LATIN HYMNS OF THE CELTIC CHURCH.

The following entry among the Irish Charters in the famous Book of Kells illustrates the fate of much of our ancient Celtic literature, especially in Scotland: “Anno Domini m^o ui^o (alias 1007). Soiscela mor coluim cille do dubguit is ind aidci as ind iardom iartarach in daimliacc moir cenannsa,” &c. A.D. 1006 (alias 1007)—The great Gospel of Calum-cille was sacrilegiously stolen at night out of the western portions of the great church of Kells. This was the chief relic of the west of the world on account of the singular cover. This Gospel was found in twenty nights and two months, with its gold stolen off, and a sod over it. Thus the “great gospel” of Columba was preserved from destruction by the merest accident. But cupidity has not been the only foe that the Celt’s ancient manuscript literature has had to contend with. The ignorance and indifference of many into whose hands it fell have also played their part;—a tailor was seen last century in the Hebrides cutting down Gaelic manuscripts for patterns. More fatal than ignorance has been the active depreciation of a hostile church operating on the animosity of a rival race. It is only now—a thousand years after the era of the ancient Celtic Church—that scholars and unprejudiced historians have succeeded in showing us a little of it. The “sod over it” has been partly removed; and the “find” has not been altogether uninteresting, although the “gold” has been “stolen off.” Zeuss has furnished us with materials for the reconstruction of the ancient Celtic language; Skene and others have given us some account of the early Iro-British Church; but Church history has not fully examined the available existing material that would show us the character of the Christian life and devotion of our early Christian ancestors in these islands. It is proposed in the following chapter to glance at the Latin Hymns of the ancient Celtic Church in order to realise to ourselves a little of the inner life of those early evangelists to whose extraordinary labours and unwearied zeal we are indebted for the conversion of our forefathers from heathenism. In these hymns we have relics of that early religious literature which helped to give Christian comfort to generations of lonely labourers on isle and mainland. Here we have transmitted to us something of the loving heavenly motives, the Gospel inspiration, by whose persuasive force the strongholds of pagan darkness were pulled down throughout the British islands, as well as in many districts on the Continent.

These devotional compositions were the common property of the whole Celtic Church at home and abroad. It is intended to look at them here as remains of the use and wont which prevailed during the “golden age” of this early Free Church, as it existed in Scotland. In doing so, it may deepen our interest in them if we briefly recall the historical setting and political surroundings in which the great work of this Church was accomplished.

In order to reach the heart of this Church, we must pierce through that belt of ecclesiastical and religious darkness which Papal Rome wove round the body of our national life during the four centuries [which preceded the] Reformation. Beyond these centuries we are enabled at once to grasp that one outstanding fact in our early annals, that from the days of Ninyas, in the beginning of the fifth century, to the accession of the “Sair Saint,” King David, in 1124 a Free Church, comparatively evangelical and aggressive, existed in Scotland for a period of 700 years. No definite attempt has been made to show the full national significance of this fact. If we contrast that period of 700 years with the following period of similar length, we find that during the first half of the latter, decay and death prevailed; and that even during the second half, with all the advantages attendant on post-Reformation times, large tracts of our country, once aglow with gospel life, remained practically heathen until the lost ground began to be reconquered and reclaimed by the modern Free Church of Scotland. In all this there is much to humble, instruct and encourage us. We learn that the essential power of the gospel is the same in all ages, and that similar results follow the earnest proclamation of truth in ancient and modern times. The Christian men that in early days made the gospel a living converting power throughout our whole land, even in every village of the Highlands, and every islet of the Hebrides, could not have been very unlike their countrymen of the present day, among whom evangelical truth is preserved and preached.

A glance at the early history of Ireland reveals the fact that a similar course of things took place there. Pope Adrian IV., known to England as Nicolas Breakspere, the only Englishman who ever sat in the chair of St. Peter, issued a bill in 1155, giving the kingdom of Ireland to Henry II. of England. This is a remarkable fact, and deeply suggestive in connection with the reasons assigned for its accomplishment. The Irish had all along been Protestants against Rome and her rule. The Pope, who like all the bishops of that holy ilk, claimed the right to dispose of all Christian lands, finding that the Irish, according to Roman estimate, were “Schismatics” and “bad Christians,” like their brethren of the same period in Scotland, made a present of the island to Henry, in order to make good Catholics of the inhabitants. Here were two Englishmen engaged in perverting, or rather completing the perversion of the Free Independent Church of Ireland to Rome. Hence all the tears of Ireland, England’s great responsibility, much bloodguiltiness on all sides, the almost utter futility of all attempts to restore to that much-enduring isle, the comparatively pure faith of its ancient days. O’Driscol, an honest Roman Catholic writer, describes the change as follows:—“There is something very singular in the ecclesiastical history of Ireland. The Christian Church of that country, as founded by St. Patrick and his predecessors, existed for many ages free and unshackled. ‘For above 700 years this Church maintained its independence.’ It had no connection with England, and differed upon points of importance with Rome. The work of Henry II. was to reduce the Church of Ireland into obedience to the Roman Pontiff. Accordingly, he procured a Council of the Irish clergy, to be held at Cashel in 1172, and the combined influence and intrigues of Henry and the Pope prevailed. This Council put an end to the ancient Church of Ireland, and submitted it to the yoke of Rome. ‘That apostacy has been followed by a series of calamities, hardly to be equalled in the world.’ From the days of St. Patrick to the Council of Cashel was a bright and glorious era for Ireland. From the sitting of this Council to our time, the lot of Ireland has been unmixed evil, and all her history a tale of woe.”

The influence of Rome on the heart of the Scottish nation, began with the marriage of Malcolm with the English Roman Catholic Princess Margaret. This Saxon queen completed the outward perversion of Scotland to Rome. She pretended to reform, but only managed to enthral the native Church, whose clergy she summoned to a Council in 1074. The Gaelic language was the only language the clergy could speak—they had a professional knowledge of Latin—so King Malcolm, her husband, acted as her interpreter. They refused to recognise the absolute supremacy of the great Roman father; they were unable to speak English; and the queen set herself piously to rectify these abuses and shortcomings. The Roman Catholic influence of the Norman went on increasing until the Court, as the Celtic Professor at Oxford says, “in the time of David, who began to reign in 1124, after being educated in England in all the ways of the Normans, was filled with his Anglican and Norman vassals. He is accordingly, regarded as the first wholly feudal King of Scotland, and the growth of feudalism went on at the expense of the power and influence of the Celtic princes, who saw themselves snubbed and crowded out to make room for the king’s barons, who had grants made to them of land here and there, wherever it was worth having. The outcome was a deep seated discontent, which every now and then burst into a flame of open revolt on the part of the rightful owners of the soil.” The Celtic Church died away with the decay of the power of the Celtic princes. At the same time the Roman religion was warmly supported in the persons of Englishmen, Flemings and Normans, who received every encouragement to settle in Scotland. The predominance of the Celtic element seems to have passed away in the eleventh century. “At the time, however, of the War of Independence, Gaelic appears to have still reached down to Stirling and Perth, to the Ochil and Sidlaw Hill, while north of the Tay it had as yet yielded to English or Broad Scotch, only a very narrow strip along the coast.” The bulk of Bruce’s army at Bannockburn was composed of the Ivernian and Celtic descendants of the ancient Free Church of Scotland. The true Christian devotion of the Fathers had not altogether disappeared: like the Puritan soldiers of Cromwell these grand old Scots began the grim work of battle for national freedom, with a fervent prayer to the God of battles,—a species of homage which surprised the more Catholic English.