Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum Part 23

The entries in this Chronicle of the Scots are very brief and condensed; but contain sc.r.a.ps of most valuable information not to be found in other authorities. They are particularly valuable in all that refers to Clonmacnoise as well as to its neighbouring territories and monastic houses. In the MS. of the Royal Irish Academy there is prefixed a note written in Gaedhlic, which attributes the composition of the Chronicle to Gilla-Christ O'Maeileoin--that is O'Malone--abbot of Clonmacnoise, who flourished in the twelfth century. This is highly probable. O'Malone was a very distinguished scholar of Clonmacnoise, and was present at the Synod of Uisneach held in the year A.D. 1111, of which Synod this Chronicle alone gives original and detailed information. The writer takes care to add that Gillachrist Ua Maeileoin, abbot of Cluain, with the congregation of Ciaran were present at the Synod. The death of this learned abbot is noticed at A.D. 1123, where he is described as "the fountain of knowledge and charity, the head of the prosperity and affluence of Erin." In its present form the Chronicle has been continued by another hand down to the year A.D. 1150. It is, therefore, a later, but hardly less important Chronicle, than that of Tighernach himself.

The Four Masters had before them when compiling their own immortal work a book which they call the _Annals of Clonmacnoise_, coming down to the year A.D. 1227. It has been conjectured that the Four Masters in that statement refer to the _Chronicon Scotorum_, which they do not mention under that name, and which doubtless must have come into their hands. But the _Chronicon Scotorum_, although it might properly be called the _Annals of Clonmacnoise_, as having been compiled in that monastery, does not in its present form come down beyond the year A.D. 1150. Neither can the work referred to by the Four Masters be the _Book of Clonmacnoise_, translated by MacGeoghegan in A.D. 1627, for that work comes down to A.D. 1407, and, moreover, does not contain important pa.s.sages, which we know were in the work used by the Four Masters. Our own opinion is that the _Book of Clonmacnoise_, and the _Annals of Clonmacnoise_, to which the Four Masters frequently refer, are identical with the _Chronicon Scotorum_, and that the work in their time did come down to A.D. 1227, but the folios containing the years from A.D. 1050 to that date have perished from mere careless use, if not from accident.

V.--THE LEABHAR-NA-H-UIDHRE.

Another celebrated work, undoubtedly composed at Clonmacnoise, is the _Leabhar-na-h-Uidhre_, now in the Royal Irish Academy. A great part of the work has unfortunately perished, so that the 138 folio pages still remaining can only be regarded as a fragment. The history of the book is very strange. The author, or rather compiler, was Maelmuire--that is, Servant of Mary--a grandson of the celebrated Conn-na-mBocht, or Conn of the Poor. Conn himself was a holy and learned man, but seems to have never taken Orders. He was greatly esteemed at Clonmacnoise; and founded an hospital or refuge for poor laymen, of which he himself seems to have been the head. He had at least two sons, one called Gellananaeve, arch-priest of Clonmacnoise, and another called Ceileachair, probably the father of this Maelmuire. Both were distinguished scholars and writers, whose books Conal MacGeoghegan quotes as sources for his own _Annals of Clonmacnoise_.

Conn's grandson Maelmuire, must have been a very distinguished scholar, and was also in all probability a lay brother of the community of Clonmacnoise. The _Annals of the Four Masters_ record the tragic end of the industrious scribe. In A.D. 1106 he was slain by a party of robbers in the midst of the great stone church of Clonmacnoise. His work was written therefore during the last years of the eleventh, and the beginning of the twelfth century; and with the exception of the _Book of Armagh_ is, so far as it goes, the oldest transcript now existing of our great historical works.

From Clonmacnoise the Book was carried, we know not when or by whom, all the way to Donegal. About the year A.D. 1340 it was given to O'Connor Sligo, so an entry in the Book itself informs us, as a ransom for O'Donnell's chief historian, who had been taken prisoner by Cathal Oge O'Conor. Donnell O'Conor, a chieftain of the same race, ordered his own historian, Sigraidh O'Cuirnin, to make an entry of the name of the author, who composed "this beautiful book," and he made that entry a week before Good Friday in the year A.D. 1345. It seems that even then the opening pages were lost, and it is to Donnell O'Conor we owe our knowledge of the writer, small as it is. The book remained in Sligo, where it was highly prized, for about 130 years, when the fortune of war brought it back again to Donegal. In A.D. 1470, Hugh Roe O'Donnell took the Castle of Sligo from the O'Conors; and amongst other trophies carried off this book again to Donegal, as the Four Masters proudly record under date of that year. How it came to the Royal Irish Academy we are not informed, but it is quite evident that the work was just as highly prized in Sligo and in Donegal, as it is in the Academy; and what is more to the purpose, the O'Clerys and O'Cuirnins knew much better how to interpret its contents than any of the members of that learned body.

The contents of the fragment are of a very varied character, partly biblical, partly historical, partly old romantic tales. One of the most important doc.u.ments contained in the _Leabhar-na-h-Uidhre_ is the ancient elegy on Columcille, composed by another bard, the celebrated Dallan Forgaill so early as the end of the sixth century. This poem is undoubtedly genuine. The language is so ancient that even the great scholars of Clonmacnoise in the eleventh century found it necessary to write an interlinear gloss in order to render it intelligible to ordinary readers at that early date.

VI.--DICUIL THE GEOGRAPHER.

In connection with the School of Clonmacnoise an account of Dicuil, the celebrated Geographer, as he is called, will not be deemed out of place.

For there is very good reason to believe that he was trained at Clonmacnoise; and if not trained there, he was certainly a pupil of some of the Columbian Schools, of which we shall treat in our next chapter. A sketch of his history and his writings, therefore, is most appropriate in this place.

Dicuil's treatise, _De Mensura Orbis Terrarum_, is one of the most interesting monuments of ancient Irish scholarship, and furnishes most conclusive proof that the culture of our writers and the learning of our schools in the ninth century were superior to almost anything yet exhibited in Western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. This work has been published in Paris, but it is now very rare, and hence we purpose giving a fuller account of its contents than might otherwise be deemed necessary. It is not to the credit of Irish learning in the present day that no attempt has been made even by any of our learned Societies to print this treatise in Ireland. It is to French scholarship we are indebted for editing and annotating Dicuil's treatise.[231]

Unfortunately we know nothing whatsoever of the personal history of Dicuil except what can be gathered from a few incidental references which he makes to himself in this treatise; but these, though very brief, are clear and definite. He tells us first of all that his name was Dicuil, and that he finished his task in the spring of the year A.D. 825. Like most of his countrymen at that time, he was fond of poetry, and gives us this information in a neat poem, written in Latin hexameters at the end of the MS., to which we shall refer again. He also implies in his opening statement, or prologue, that he had already written an _Epistola de questionibus decem Artis Grammaticae_, which was probably intended to be copied and circulated amongst the Irish monastic schools of the time, but of which we know nothing more. He tells us that a certain Suibneus (Suibhne), or Sweeney, was his master to whom under G.o.d he owed whatever knowledge he possessed. His native country was Ireland, which he describes in affectionate language as "nostra Hibernia,"--our own Ireland--in opposition to the foreign countries of which he had been speaking.

Elsewhere he calls it in accordance with the usage of the time _nostra Scottia_. He also adds when referring to the islands in the north and north-west of Scotland, that he had dwelt in some of them, he had visited others, more of them he had merely seen, and some of them he had only read of.

This is really all the information we have about Dicuil, and from data so meagre, it is very difficult to identify Dicuil the Geographer, amongst the many Irish monks who bore that name.

By a careful examination, however, of these and some other facts to which he refers, we can conjecture with some probability where and by whom he was educated.

When speaking of Iceland Dicuil refers to information communicated to him thirty years before by certain Irish clerics, who had spent some months in that island. This brings us back to A.D. 795, so that when Dicuil wrote in A.D. 825, he must have been a man considerably advanced in years. We may infer, too, that his master, Suibhne, to whom he owed so much, flourished as a teacher at a still earlier period than A.D. 795. There were several abbots who bore that name between A.D. 750 and A.D. 850; but it appears to us that the master of Dicuil must have been either Suibhne, Abbot of Iona, who died in A.D. 772, or Suibhne, son of Cuana, Abbot of Clonmacnoise, who died in A.D. 816. If Dicuil were, suppose, seventy-five when he wrote his book, he must have been born in A.D. 750. He would then be about sixteen years of age when Suibhne, Vice-Abbot of Iona, came over to his native Ireland in A.D. 766, where he remained some time. Suppose that Dicuil returned with him as a novice in that year, he could have been six years under the instruction of Suibhne before that abbot's death in A.D. 772. It is likely that Dicuil remained in Iona for several years after the death of his beloved master. It was, doubtless, during these years that he visited the Scottish islands, and dwelt with some of the communities whom St. Columba had established there. On this point his own statement is clear and explicit.

The founder of Iona, Columcille, with his kinsmen, originally came from Donegal, and the monastery seems to have been princ.i.p.ally recruited at all times by members of the Cenel-conal race. Amongst the saints who were called Dicuil, or Diucholl, were two who were venerated in Donegal; one the son of Neman, whose memory was venerated at Kilmacrenan on December 25th; the other was Dicuil of Inishowen, whose feast-day is December 18th.

The latter is described as a hermit; and it may be that our geographer, after his return from Iona, retired to a life of solitude in Inishowen, and there, towards the close of his life, composed this treatise, of which the most valuable portion is that containing the reminiscences of his early life in the Scottish islands.

The chief difficulty against this hypothesis, that Suibhne, Dicuil's master, was the Abbot of Iona who died in A.D. 772, is the great age at which, in that case, the pupil must have written his book, in A.D. 825.

The monks of those days, however, were often intellectually and physically vigorous at the age of eighty, and even of ninety years.

The other hypothesis certainly fits in better with the dates; so we must a.s.sume that Dicuil was trained at the great College of Clonmacnoise, which at this period was certainly the most celebrated school in Ireland, if not in Europe. Suibhne, we are told, was abbot for two years before his death, in A.D. 816; but had been, no doubt, for many years previously, a _fer-legind_, or professor in Clonmacnoise. It was nothing new for the younger monks to travel to other religious houses in pursuit of knowledge and sanct.i.ty; and in this way Dicuil, like so many of his countrymen, would visit Iona and the Scottish islands.

The treatise _De Mensura Orbis Terrarum_ is very valuable as affording evidence of the varied cla.s.sical culture that existed in our Irish monastic schools at this period. In the prologue the author tells us that he derived his information mainly from two sources; first, from the Report of the Commissioners whom the divine Emperor Theodosius had sent to survey the provinces of the Roman Empire; and secondly, from the excellent work of Plinius Secundus--that is, the _Natural History_ which is so well known to scholars. Dicuil complains that the ma.n.u.scripts of the Report in his possession were very faulty; but still, being of more recent date than Pliny's work, he values it more highly. He adds that he leaves vacant places in his own ma.n.u.script for the numbers, in order to be able to fill them in afterwards when he can verify or correct them by collating his own with other ma.n.u.scripts of the Report. He also quotes numerous pa.s.sages from other writers, who, we are afraid, are not very familiar to the cla.s.sical scholars of our own times. The first of these works is that of Caius Julius Solinus, known as the Polyhistor. Of his personal history we know as little as we do of Dicuil himself. He flourished about the middle of the third century, and appears to have borrowed his matter, and sometimes even his language, from Pliny's _Natural History_. The contents of this work of Solinus may be inferred from the t.i.tle of an English translation, published in A.D. 1587: "_The Excellent and Pleasant Work of Julius Solinus, Polyhistor, containing the n.o.ble Actions of Humaine Creatures, the Secretes and Providence of Nature, the Description of Countries, the Manners of the People, &c., &c._ Translated out of the Latin by Arthur Golding, Gent." Another work, equally unknown to the present generation, but frequently quoted by Dicuil, is the _Periegesis_ of Priscian. It is a metrical translation into Latin hexameters of a Greek work bearing the same t.i.tle, which was originally composed by Dionysius, surnamed from that fact Periegetes, or the "Traveller," in Goldsmith's sense. He appears to have flourished in the second half of the third century of the Christian era.

Such are the princ.i.p.al authorities whom Dicuil follows; and as he knew nothing of foreign countries himself, he cites his authorities textually for the benefit of his own countrymen. It is surely a singular and interesting fact that we should find an Irish monk, in the beginning of the ninth century, collating and criticising various ma.n.u.scripts of those writers either in some Irish monastic school at home, or in the equally Irish school of Iona, though surrounded by Scottish waters and in view of the Scottish hills.

For us, however, the information which Dicuil gives us of his own knowledge, or gathered from his own countrymen, is far more valuable; and to this we would especially invite the reader's attention.

In the sixth chapter, when speaking of the Nile, he says

"Although we never read in any book that any branch of the Nile flows into the Red Sea, yet Brother Fidelis[232] told in my presence, to my master Suibhne (to whom, under G.o.d, I owe whatever knowledge I possess), that certain clerics and laymen from Ireland, who went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, sailed up the Nile for a long way."

--and thence continued their voyage by ca.n.a.l to the entrance of the Red Sea.

This Irish pilgrimage to Jerusalem is worthy of notice, for many of our critics where they find mention of such pilgrimages to Rome and to Jerusalem in the Lives of our early Saints, seem to regard it as an exaggeration, if not a kind of pious fraud. But here we have the testimony of one in every way worthy of credit, who himself spoke to such pilgrims after their return from the Holy Land.

Then their testimony is peculiarly valuable in reference to a vexed geographical question regarding the existence of a navigable ca.n.a.l in those days from the Nile to the Red Sea. A ca.n.a.l called the "River of Ptolemy" and afterwards "The River of Trajan," was certainly cut from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile to the Red Sea at Arisnoe. It was certainly open for commerce in the time of Trajan, but during the decline of the Roman empire became partially filled with sand. Trajan, it seems, however, when re-opening the ca.n.a.l connected it with the Nile at a point higher up the river than the old route, opposite Memphis, near Babylon, in order that the fresh water might flow through the ca.n.a.l and help to keep it open. Under the Arabians this ca.n.a.l of Trajan was re-opened, but geographers have a.s.serted that it became choked shortly afterwards and remained so ever since. The testimony of the Irish pilgrims quoted by Dicuil is the only satisfactory evidence that we now possess to prove that this ca.n.a.l was open at the end of the eighth century for the purposes of commerce and navigation.[233]

The pilgrims also give some interesting information with reference to the Pyramids, which they call the "Barns of Joseph." "The pilgrims," he says, "saw them from the river rising like mountains four in one place and three in another." Then they landed to view these wonders close at hand and coming to one of the three greater pyramids, they saw eight men and one woman and a great lion stretched dead beside it. The lion had attacked them, and the men in turn had attacked the lion with their spears, with the result that all perished in the mutual slaughter, for the place was a desert and there was no one at hand to help then. From top to bottom the pyramids were all built of stone, square at the base, but rounded towards the summit, and tapering to a point. The aforesaid brother Fidelis measured one of them, and found that the square face was 400 feet in length. Going thence by the ca.n.a.l to the Red Sea, they found the pa.s.sage across to the eastern sh.o.r.e at the Road of Moses to be only a short distance. The brother who had measured the base of the pyramid wished to examine the exact point where Moses had entered the Red Sea, in order to try if he could find any traces of the Chariots of Pharaoh, or the wheel tracks; but the sailors were in a hurry and would not allow him to go on this excursion. The breadth of the sea at this point appeared to him to be about six miles. Then they sailed up this narrow bay which once kept the murmuring Israelites from returning to Egypt.

This is a very interesting and manifestly authentic narrative. Another interesting chapter is that in which Dicuil describes Iceland and the Faroe Islands. "It is now thirty years," he says, "since certain clerics, who remained in that island (Ultima Thule) from the 1st of February to the 1st of August, told me that not only at the Summer solstice, (as Solinus said), but also for several days about the solstice, the setting sun at eventide merely hid himself, as it were, for a little behind a hill, so that there was no darkness even for a moment, and whatever a man wished to do, if it were only to pick vermin off his shirt--vol pediculos de camisia abstrahere--he could do as it were in the light of the sun, and if he were on a mountain of any height, he could doubtless see the sun all through."

This way of putting it is certainly more graphic than elegant, but it is at the same time strictly accurate, and shows that the Irish monks had really spent the summer in Iceland. For the arctic circle just touches the extreme north of Iceland, and therefore in any part of that country the sun would even at the solstice set for a short time, but it would be only, as it were, going behind a hill to reappear in an hour or in half an hour.

So that by the aid of refraction and twilight a man would always have light enough to perform even those delicate operations to which Dicuil refers.

He then observes with much acuteness that at the middle point of this brief twilight it is midnight at the equator, or middle of the earth; and in like manner he infers that about the Winter solstice there must be daylight for a very short time in Thule, when it is noonday at the equator. These observations show a keen observant mind, and would lead us to infer that Dicuil, like his countryman Virgilius, who flourished a little earlier, had been taught the sphericity of the earth in the schools of his native country. He says also in this same chapter, what is certainly true, that those writers are greatly mistaken who describe the Icelandic Sea as always frozen, and who say that there is a perpetual day from Spring to Autumn, and perpetual night from Autumn to Spring. For the Irish monks sailed thither, he says, through an open sea in a month of great natural cold, and whilst they were there enjoyed alternate day and night except about the Summer solstice, as already explained. But one day's sail further north brought them to the frozen sea.

Dicuil's reference to Iceland is interesting from another point of view.

In almost all our books of popular instruction, and even in many standard works on geography, it is stated that the Danes, or Norwegians, "discovered" Iceland about the year A.D. 860, and shortly afterward colonized it during the reign of Harold Harf.a.ger. But Dicuil clearly shows that it was well known to Irish monks at least more than half a century before Dane or Norwegian ever set foot on the island, as is now generally admitted by scholars who are familiar with Icelandic literature and history.

The following interesting pa.s.sage which shows the roving spirit that animated some of the Irish monks at that period is contained in the third section of the same seventh chapter. "There are several other islands in the ocean to the north of Britain, which can be reached in a voyage of two days and two nights with a favourable breeze. A certain trustworthy monk (religiosus) told me that he reached one of them by sailing for two summer days and one night in a vessel with two benches of rowers (duorum navicula transtrorum). Some of these islands are very small and separated by narrow straits. In these islands for almost a hundred years there dwelt hermits, who sailed there from our own Ireland (nostra Scottia). But now they are once more deserted, as they were from the beginning, on account of the ravages of the Norman pirates. They are, however, still full of sheep, and of various kinds of sea birds. We have never found these islands mentioned by any author."

It is quite evident that Dicuil here refers to the Faroe Islands, which are about 250 miles north of the Scottish coast. A glance at the map will show that they are rather small, and separated from each other by very narrow channels, and in this respect differing from the Shetland Islands, to which this description could not therefore apply. Besides, the Shetlands are only 50 miles from the Orkneys, and about 100 from the mainland; hence they could easily be reached in a single day by an open boat sailing before a favourable wind; whereas the islands occupied by the Irish hermits could only be reached after a voyage of two days and a night, even in the most favourable circ.u.mstances. The word "nostra Scottia" of course refers to Ireland; for up to the time that Dicuil wrote, that word had never been applied to North Britain. Skene, himself a learned Scot, has shown by numerous citations from ancient authors that beyond all doubt the name "Scottia" was applied to Ireland, and to Ireland alone, prior to the tenth century.[234] Up to that time the name of Scotland was Alban or Albania.

The love of the ancient Irish monks for island solitudes is one of the most remarkable features in their character. There is hardly an island round our coasts, which does not contain the remains of some ancient oratory or monastic cells. But they did not always remain in sight of land. Inspired partly with the hope of finding a "desert" in the ocean, partly, no doubt, also with a love of adventure and a vague hope of discovering the "Land of Promise," they sailed out into the Atlantic in their currachs in search of these lonely islands. Every one has heard of the seven years' voyage of St. Brendan in the western ocean. St. Ailbe of Emly had resolved to find out the island of Thule, which the Roman geographers placed somewhere in the northern sea. He was, however, prevented from going himself, but "he sent twenty men into exile over the sea in his stead."[235] St. Cormac the Navigator, made three voyages in the pathless ocean seeking some desert island where he might devote himself to an eremitic life. It is highly probable he went as far north as Iceland; for Ad.a.m.nan tells us that he sailed northwards for fourteen days, until he was frightened by the sight of the monsters of the deep, when he returned home touching on his way at the Orkney islands.

When the Norwegians first discovered Iceland in A.D. 860, they found Irish books, and bells, and pilgrims' staffs, or croziers, which were left there by men who professed the Christian religion and whom the Norwegians called "papas" or "fathers." Dicuil, however, gives us the earliest authentic testimony that Iceland and the Faroe Isles had been discovered and occupied by Irish monks long before the Danes or Norwegians discovered these islands. Of Ireland itself, Dicuil unfortunately gives us no information. He was writing for his own countrymen, and he a.s.sumed that they knew as much about Ireland--"our own Ireland"--as he did. The only observation he makes in reference to Ireland is that there were islands round the coast, and that some were small, and others very small. But he takes one quotation from Solinus, who says that--

"Britain is surrounded by many important islands, one of which, Ireland, approaches to Britain itself in size. It abounds in pastures so rich, that if the cattle are not sometimes driven away from them they run the risk of bursting. The sea between Britain and Ireland is so wide and stormy throughout the entire year that it is only navigable on a very few days. The channel is about 120 miles broad."

Dicuil, however, good Irishman as he was, does not quote two other statements which Solinus made about the pre-Christian Scots--for he wrote before the time of St. Patrick--first, that the Irish recognised no difference between right and wrong at all; and, secondly, that they fed their children from the point of the sword--a rather inconvenient kind of spoon we should think. In fact the Romans of those days knew as little, and wrote as confidently, about Ireland as most Englishmen do at present, and that is saying a good deal.

There is one incidental reference in Dicuil--chapter V., section ii.--which is of the highest importance, because it settles the question as to the nationality of the celebrated Irish poet, Sedulius, the author of the hymns _Crudelis Herodes_ and _A solis ortus Cardine_, in the Roman Breviary. Dicuil quoting twelve lines of poetry from the Report of the Commissioners of Theodosius, observes, that the first foot of the seventh and eighth of these hexameter lines is an amphimacrus. Here are the lines:--

"Confici ter quinis aperit c.u.m fastibus annum.

Supplices hoc famuli, dum scribit, pingit et alter."

"At the same time," says Dicuil, "I do not think it was from ignorance of prosody these lines were so written, for the writers had the authority of other poets in their favour, and especially of Virgil, whom in similar cases _our own Sedulius_ imitated, and he, in his heroic stanzas, rarely uses feet different from those of Virgil and the cla.s.sical poets." "Noster Sedulius," here applied to the great religious poet by his own countryman, in the ninth century, settles the question of his Irish birth. The reader will observe also, what a keen critic Dicuil was of Latin poetry, and will probably come to the conclusion that they knew Prosody better in the Irish schools of the ninth than they do in those of the nineteenth century.

In the closing stanzas of his own short poem on the cla.s.sic mountains, Dicuil implies that he finished his work in the Spring of A.D. 825, when night gives grateful rest to the wearied oxen who had covered the seed-wheat in the dusty soil.

"Post octingentos viginti quinque peractos Summi annos Domini terrae, aethrae, carceris atri, Semine triticeo sub ruris pulvere tecto Nocte bobus requies largitur fine laboris."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COLUMBIAN SCHOOLS IN IRELAND.

"I hold it truth with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things."

--_Tennyson._