The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran by Anonymous (recommended reading txt) 📖

Brussels MS. only.]

[Footnote 33: In Brussels MS. only.]

[Footnote 34: This name in the Brussels MS. only.]

[Footnote 35: Here the Brussels MS. is corrupt.]

[Footnote 36: Sic MSS. We should read "came from heaven,"]

* * * * *


ANNOTATIONS TO THE FOREGOING LIVES


I. THE HOMILETIC INTRODUCTION (VG)

The three Latin lives plunge in medias res at the beginning; but VG prefixes an introduction borrowed from a Homily on Charity . The Irish text of this homily, with the original Latin, will be found printed from the fifteenth-century MS. called Leabhar Breac ("The speckled book") in Atkinson's Passions and Homilies (Dublin 1887). The text announced by the preacher is clearly suggested by incident XXII. It has already been shown in the Introduction, that this Life, with its homiletic preface, was a sermon written to be preached or read on the festival of the saint (9th September) at Clonmacnois.

The keynote of the Irish homily is struck in this first section. It is the work of some scholar of Clonmacnois, with a warm enthusiasm for the dignity of his alma mater . The sermon is as much a eulogy of Clonmacnois as of Ciaran. In the preacher's view, Clonmacnois is the chief and central church of Ireland, and the source of all ecclesiastical discipline in the country. Its founder excelled his fellow-saints as the sun excels the stars (§ 2). His pre-eminence was recognised by angels, who relieved him of labour when his turn came (§ 13): and on several occasions Findian showed a like favouritism (§§ 18, 20, a , d , 23). Clonmacnois was superior to the rival house at Birr (§ 20 b ); and possessed in the hide of the Dun Cow an infallible passport to heaven (§ 20 c ). The vision of the tree seen by Enda and by Ciaran prophesied the pre-eminence of Clonmacnois (§ 24). The other saints were envious of his renown and of the glory of his monastery (§ 40).

The Hymn of Colum Cille. -Following the usual practice of Irish prose literary composition, the homilist intersperses his work throughout with verse extracts, appealed to as the authority for the various statements which he has occasion to make. In the present section he draws upon a hymn made by Colum Cille in honour of Ciaran. To this hymn, and to its surviving fragments, we shall return in commenting upon incident LI, where the composition of the hymn is alluded to.

The Ante-natal Prophecies. -Patrick is said also to have prophesied the advent of Senan (LL, 1845)[1] and of Alban (CS, 505); and Becc mac De that of Brenainn (LL, 3343). But the parallels drawn between the Life of Ciaran and that of Christ have made such prophecies especially appropriate in the present case.

The prophecy of Saint Patrick took place under the following circumstances (VTP, p. 84 ff.).[2] The leper whom, in accordance with a custom frequent in early Irish monasticism, Patrick is said to have maintained-partly for charity and partly for self-abasement-departed from Patrick when the latter was on the holy mountain of Cruachan Aigli (Croagh Patrick, Co. Mayo). He made his way to the then empty site of Clonmacnois, and sat in the split trunk of a hollow elm tree. A stranger made his appearance, and the leper, having assured himself that he was a Christian, requested him to uproot a bundle of rushes and to give him in a clean vessel of the water that would burst forth. Then the leper begged of the stranger to bring tools for digging, and to bury him there; and he was the first dead man to be buried in Clonmacnois. Now after this had taken place, the nephew of Patrick, Bishop Muinis, chanced to be benighted on the same spot, when returning from a mission to Rome on which the apostle had sent him. There were angels hovering over the leper's grave, and thus Muinis recognised it as the burial-place of a man of God. He deposited the relics which he was bearing back from Rome, for the night, in the hollow elm; but he found in the morning that the tree had closed upon them, and that they could not be recovered. In sorrow for their loss, he related the event to Patrick, and for his comfort he was told that a Son of Life-to wit Ciaran, son of the wright-was destined to come thither, and that he would need the relics. These relics are mentioned in VG 41, though "Benen and Cumlach" [the leper] are there said to have left them, not Muinis. From this reference we learn that they were attributed to Saints Peter and Paul.

It is quite clear that this curious story has reached us in a fragmentary and expurgated form, and that if we had the whole narrative before us it would afford us an indication that Clonmacnois was the site of an earlier, Pagan, sanctuary. It will most probably be found to be an invariable rule that the early Christian establishments in Ireland occupy the sites of Pagan sanctuaries; the monastery having been founded to re-consecrate the holy place to the True Faith. The hollow elm was doubtless a sacred tree; the well which miraculously burst forth was a sacred well: the buried leper may have been a foundation sacrifice, like Oran on Iona. The old pre-Christian name of the site is suggestive- Ard Tiprat , "the high place of the [holy] well." By no stretch of language can the site of Clonmacnois be called physically high; as in the stanza quoted in VG 30, the word Ard must be used in the sense of distinguished, eminent, or sacred.

Of the prophecy attributed to Brigit there appears to be no record in any of her numerous Lives : nor can I identify with certainty the story of "the fire and the angel." There were "Crosses of Brigit" at Armagh;[3] but as there were probably many other crosses throughout the country dedicated to this popular saint we cannot infer that Armagh was the scene of the prophecy.

Becc mac De was chief soothsayer to King Diarmait mac Cerrbeil. Very little is certainly known of him; most of the traditions relating to him consist of tales of his remarkable gift of foretelling the future-tales similar to those related of the Covenanter Alexander Peden in Scotland, or of the seventeenth-century Mayo peasant Red Brian Carabine.[4] He died in or about the year A.D. 555 (the annalists waver between 552 and 557); and the Annals of Clonmacnois tell us that he began to prophesy in 550. As Ciaran is said to have died in 548, the statement that Becc mac De foretold his coming is anachronistic. The prophecy here attributed to him does not appear in the list of prognostications attributed to him (given in the MS. Harleian 5280, British Museum, edited in Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie , ix, 169), or in Leabhar Breac , p. 260, where some further particulars about him are given.

I have ventured to emend the passage regarding Becc mac De slightly, restoring the verse form which the prophecy seems to have had originally. As it appears in the Lismore Lives printed text it is given in prose; an insignificant transposition of the words, and the taking of the word andsin out of the inverted commas is all that is necessary.[5] In the rendering in the text an attempt is made to reproduce to some extent the elaboration of alliteration, but the end-rhymes and the vowel-assonances cannot be imitated without sacrificing the sense. The metre resembles that known as mibhasc (four-syllable and six-syllable lines alternating, but with trisyllabic rhyme in the short lines).

The person to whom Colum Cille uttered his prophecy was Aed mac Brenainn, Prince of Tethba (Teffia), the region comprising various baronies in the modern Co. Westmeath and part of Co. Longford. This Aed gave Dermag (Durrow) to Colum Cille a few years before the latter's departure for Scotland. There is, however, no record of the prophecy in the lives of Colum Cille; probably his visit to Clonmacnois from Durrow is in the writer's mind. Ard Abla, identified by O'Donovan with Lissardowlin, Co. Longford, was in the territory of Tethba. The Lismore scribe has written the name of Aed's father incorrectly (Brandub); the correction ("or Brenainn") is a marginal note.


II. THE ORIGIN AND BIRTH OF CIARAN: THE WIZARD'S PROPHECIES (LA, LB, LC, VG)

The Pedigree (VG).-The pedigree in VG traces Ciaran's descent from Tigernmas, fabled to have reigned in Tara 3580-3657 Anno Mundi (1620-1543 B.C.).[6] Through Tigernmas the line is traced to Mil of Spain, the eponymous ancestor of the "Milesians," or Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Ireland.

There is another pedigree, totally different, which connects the saint, not with the Tara kings, but with those of the Ulaid or Ulster folk, through the dethroned Fergus who figures so prominently in the epic tale Táin Bó Cualnge . This pedigree appears in the Book of Leinster (facsimile, pp. 348, 349) and Leabhar Breac (facsimile, p. 16), the Bodleian MS. Rawlinson B 506, p. 154 d , and in the MS. in Marsh's Library containing LA, at the foot of the column where LA begins; with an added note stating that Ciaran was "of the true Ultonains of Emain": its authenticity is adopted by Keating (I.T.S. edition, vol. iii, p. 48). Correcting one copy with another this genealogy runs as follows-


Ciaran son of Coscrach son of Aislithe son of
Beodan " Mesinsuad " Modruad "
Bolcan " Mesinsulad " Follomain "
Linned " Erce " Deoda "
Corc " Erc (or Oscar) " Eochaid "
Daig " Mechon " Corc "
Cunneda " Nechtan " Fergus "
Cass " Aed Corb " Ros "
Froech " Aed Gnoe "