Part 34 (1/2)

In the year 1880 the _Felire, or Metrical Calendar of aengus_, edited and translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes, was published by the Royal Irish Academy. In a paper read before the Academy so early as 1871, and prefixed to this work, Dr. Stokes a.s.serts that aengus cannot have been the author of the _Felire_; that similar linguistic reasons prove that he cannot have been the author of the _Saltair-na-Rann_, and that there is not a particle of trustworthy evidence to show that aengus ever wrote either the _Pedigrees of the Irish Saints_, or his celebrated _Litany of the Irish Saints_. Dr. Stokes is a conscientious and painstaking writer, but with a love of originality in his views. We carefully examined the reasons which he gives in favour of these very original views, and we must say we thought them exceedingly hollow. As to his linguistic reasons for a.s.serting that the _Felire_ and the _Saltair_ could not have been written before the close of the tenth century, we may confidently set the opinion of an Irish scholar like Eugene O'Curry against that of Dr. Whitley Stokes, whose knowledge of Irish is purely book knowledge. There is not a single linguistic form in the MSS., which he alleges to be later than the eighth century, that cannot be explained by the well-known custom of the copyists modernizing the language of the MSS., so as to make their copies more intelligible to those for whom they wrote.[321] We have already explained how in a similar way the names of a few saints, and of the author himself, might have been added to the _Felire_ by a copyist who wished to pay honour to a favourite saint of his own church. Flimsy reasons of this kind manifestly cannot outweigh the explicit testimony of the Scholiast's Introduction--written before the twelfth century in very ancient Irish--that these were the works of aengus, and giving us the time, the place, and the circ.u.mstances of their composition, with the few facts that are known to us concerning the life of the writer.

It is very likely that aengus died in his beloved retreat at Disert-beagh; but, according to the metrical Life, he was buried at Clonenagh. He had laboured long and travelled far to ill.u.s.trate the history of the saints of his native land; and now that long day's work was done, and he lay down to sleep in the bosom of the dear and holy scenes of his childhood. He knew that the pious brotherhood of Clonenagh would not forget to chant for many a year the requiem for his soul's repose; and that the 'pure cold Nore' of his youthful love would breathe its gentle murmurs near his grave for ever. But his voice has not been stilled by the flight of centuries--even now he speaks to us on earth in his writings, and he prays for us amongst the choirs of angels and saints in heaven.

Clonenagh suffered so much during the Danish wars that it gradually fell away from its ancient importance, and in the twelfth century sank to the rank of a parochial church. At present it is only a green mound a.s.sociated with a historic name.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SCHOOL OF GLENDALOUGH.

”By that lake, whose gloomy sh.o.r.e Skylark never warbles o'er, Where the cliff hangs high and steep, Young St. Kevin stole to sleep.”

--_Moore._

I.--ST. KEVIN.

Glendalough--the Valley of the Two Lakes--is, for a religious and cultivated mind, one of the most interesting spots in Ireland. Nature has made it wild and beautiful; religion has hallowed its scenery with the holiest a.s.sociations; the genius of song has lit up its dark lakes and mountains with all the radiance of romance. It is one of those places the very sight of which raises the mind from mean and sordid thoughts to the contemplation of what is beautiful and good.

This will be felt all the more by those who are acquainted with the holy and self-denying life of the founder of Glendalough. His career is peculiarly interesting and attractive; for he was a man of the most amiable disposition, and yet of the most austere virtue; a lover of nature and a teacher of men, with the emotional soul of a poet, and a conscience of angelic purity. We are told that the wild birds loved to alight on his shoulders, and that the savage beasts fawned at his feet. He felt himself most at home in the midst of the wild majestic scenery of his mountain valley, where he loved to commune with Nature and with Nature's G.o.d. We are told in his Life that his eyes and ears were always open to the sights and sounds around him--that the birds made sweet music in his ears--that the toil of his austere life was lightened by listening to the gentle murmurs of the wind through the leaves of the trees around his cell.

Kevin--in Irish Coemghen, or the Fair-begotten--came of the royal stock of Leinster both on his father's and mother's side. His father, Coemlug, was seventh in descent from Messincorb, the common ancestor of the Dal Messincorb, who himself was son of Cucorb, a king of Leinster in the beginning of the second century. Coemell, his mother, was the daughter of Cennandan, a chief of the Dal Cormac, so called from Cormac Caech, who was a brother of that Messincorb already alluded to.

Coemghen was born A.D. 498, for we are told that he was one hundred and twenty years old when he died A.D. 618. The place of his birth is not given in his Life; but it was somewhere in the county Wicklow, the south-eastern corner of which, around Rathdrum, seems to have been the patrimony of his family. It was a family of saints; for Kevin had two brothers and two sisters, whose names are in the Calendar. One of the brothers was Caemhan of Ard-Chaemhain, near Wexford; the other was Mocuemin, or Nathchaemh, the cousin and successor of St. Columba of Terrygla.s.s, in Lower Ormond. The sisters were St. Coeltigerna, mother of St. Dagan of Inver Daoile, in Wicklow, and Melda, the mother of the younger St. Abban, who was born about the year A.D. 520. Then, again, Coemghen's paternal uncle was St. Eugenius, Bishop of Ardstraw, the princ.i.p.al patron saint of the diocese of Derry.

The family, too, seems to have been remarkable for personal beauty as well as for sanct.i.ty of life--all its members, male and female, being described in their very names as 'beautiful' or 'fair-begotten.' Young Coemghen of Glendalough grew up to be a youth of remarkable beauty, so that his good looks became a source of great danger and temptation to the boy, as we shall presently see.

The child was baptized by a priest called Cronan, not by an Angel, as has been sometimes foolishly said. It is stated, however, in the saint's Life in the _Salamanca MS._, that an Angel under the appearance of a beautiful boy, met the child when it was being carried to the font, and blessed the infant--a fact which is not at all improbable.

At the early age of seven the child was placed under the care of St.

Petroc, a learned and holy man who came from Cornwall, and hence is called a Briton in the _Life of St. Kevin_. Petroc came to Ireland in A.D. 492 and devoted himself to the study of Sacred Scripture, as well as to the instruction and edification of his neighbours in Wicklow, both by word and example. He afterwards returned to his own country, where he continued the same course of saintly life. His monastic school in Cornwall became a great centre of learning and holiness, and was known as Petroc-Stowe, which afterwards came to be corrupted into Padstow--its present name.

Under the care of this venerable master young Coemghen remained for twelve years, until A.D. 512, when he was transferred to the guidance of his uncle, St. Eugenius, afterwards founder and bishop of Ardstraw. He had studied some years in Britain in the great monastery of Rosnat which by some writers is placed in Wales, but by others, with much more probability, is identified with Whithern in Galloway. Eugenius, after his return to his own country, in conjunction with St. Lochan and St. Enna, founded a monastic school at a place called Kilnamanagh, in his native territory of Cualann. There is a townland called Kilnamanagh in the parish of Glenealy, north-east of Rathdrum, in Wicklow; and it was here, doubtless, that Coemghen lived under the care of these three saints, making, we are told, daily progress in virtue and learning.

St. Eugenius, though he had studied in the schools of Britain, was probably not much older than his nephew. He was now, it seems, desirous to preach the Gospel in the native territory of his mother, who came from the North of Ireland, and he was anxious to appoint young Coemghen to succeed him at Kilnamanagh. Thereupon Coemghen, fearing to be raised to this post of honour and responsibility, fled from his uncle's monastery to the desert of Glendalough, and hid himself in the remotest recesses of that wild mountain valley.

There was it seems another reason, too, which has been much distorted by poetic licence, that induced him to fly from his native district. The genuine story is told in his Life, and is very different from the popular and poetic account. Coemghen was a very handsome youth, and his good looks won the affection of a beautiful girl of his own age, whose sorrow was great to find her love not only unrequited, but unnoticed. On one occasion she even followed the gracious boy, when he went with his brothers to the woods, and finding him alone exerted all her blandishments to win his heart. The young saint, tormented instead of softened by her proffered caresses, which he had tried in vain to repel, resolved to give her a lesson for the future. He had flung himself half-naked into a brake full of nettles, and now gathering a handful, he scourged the girl with the burning nettles on her face and arms. ”The fire without,” says the author of the saint's Life, ”extinguished the fire within.” Her heart was touched with the grace of penance. She humbly asked Coemghen's pardon for all she had done to tempt him, and besought him to pray to G.o.d in her behalf. Such prayers could not but be heard; and so we are told that she became a sincere convert, consecrating her virginity to G.o.d, and faithfully following all the years of her life the counsels and spiritual guidance of St. Coemghen. To scourge the fair Kathleen with nettles for the good of her soul is a very different thing from flinging her into the lake.

Before Kevin retired to the recesses of Glendalough, he was ordained priest by Bishop Lugaidh, or Lugidus. Some persons think it was by his advice that Coemghen sought that lonely retreat.

In order to understand the subsequent events in the life of St. Coemghen, or, as we may now call him, St. Kevin, it is necessary to have some idea of the topography of Glendalough.

The valley is something more than two miles long, and about three quarters in average breadth. It runs from east to west, slightly trending towards the north at its western extremity. Towards the east it gradually opens into the valley of the Avonmore; but on the other three sides it is completely enclosed by lofty and precipitous mountains. To the south, or left hand, looking westward, are the mountains of Derrybawn and Lugduff, the latter especially rising in steep and gloomy grandeur, like a great wall, from the floor of the valley. On the north or right hand are the two mountains of Brockagh and Comaderry--neither so bold nor so steep as Lugduff; Comaderry, however, rises to the height of 2,296 feet, while Lugduff is only 2,140 above the level of the sea.

There are two lakes in this dark valley, one called the Upper, or western lake, which is the larger and gloomier sheet of water lying under the gigantic shadow of Lugduff, whose cliffs rise sheer from the water to the height of 1,000 feet. The Lower, or eastern lakelet, is smaller and brighter in its aspect, and leaves a foot pa.s.sage on either side between its sh.o.r.es and the mountains to the north and south. At the extreme western end of the valley a mountain torrent dashes down a steep ravine into the lake, forming a fine cascade, which may be seen from the eastern sh.o.r.e of the lake. There is another mountain stream that rushes down between Lugduff and Derrybawn on the south, forming a grand waterfall called Pollana.s.s, escaping from which its waters enter the Upper Lake at its south-eastern extremity. Fed by these two streams and numerous rivulets, the Upper Lake sends out its surplus waters down the valley in a considerable stream called here the Glenealo River, which rushes eastward over the broken ground until it takes rest for a while in the Lower Lake.

Emerging thence, and still flowing eastward for half a mile, it unites with another stream called the Glendasan River, which flows down the back of Comaderry mountain. For about a quarter of a mile before uniting, these two streams flow almost parallel through the valley, and then suddenly bending towards each other, send their united waters still eastward to join the Avonmore at Larah, towards the eastern extremity of the Valley of Glendalough. The delta, formed in the valley by the Glenealo and Glendasan rivers, was the site of the 'City' of Glendalough, and there still the princ.i.p.al ruins are to be found.

When Kevin fled from Kilnamanagh and its dangers, he penetrated to the very heart of this wilderness, and took up his abode in its most inaccessible retreats. The writer of his Life gives a most accurate description of the spot which he chose for his place of abode. ”It was a valley closed in with lofty and precipitous mountains, and in the western part of this valley towards the south he found a lake enclosed between two mountains.”[322] On the sh.o.r.es of this lake he lived for seven years the life of a solitary, without fire, without a roof, and almost without human food. ”On the northern sh.o.r.e his dwelling was in a hollow tree; but on the southern sh.o.r.e of the lake he dwelt in a very narrow cave, to which there was no access except by a boat, for a perpendicular rock of immense height overhangs it from above.” This is St. Kevin's Bed on the face of Lugduff, overhanging the southern sh.o.r.e of the Upper Lake, whose deep waters wash the base of the rock 30 feet beneath. Even from the lake the path is steep and difficult, but not dangerous. Very few, however, have the steadiness and courage to descend to the cave from the overhanging cliffs above.

The cave itself is only about four feet square, and not high enough to stand upright in. But there is a smaller hollow within where the saint might lay his head and s.n.a.t.c.h his few hours of brief repose. It was a dizzy height, and a hard bed; but we cannot judge of the saints of G.o.d by our own worldly and selfish standard. And for one who loved G.o.d and His glorious works, as St. Kevin did, there were never wanting, by day or night, sights and sounds to fill his mind with manifold ideas of the wondrous attributes of the great Author of all. The majesty of these dark mountains, the changing glories of these lakes and streams, the voices of the falling waters, the roaring of the storms through the wintry hills, Arturus and the Bear rising over the lofty crest of Comaderry and for ever silently sweeping round the changeless pole, the morning sun flooding the dark valley with light--a pale reflection of the splendour around the Great White Throne--these were the sights that met his eyes, and the voices that spoke in his ears during the days and nights that he spent on the rocky floor of his narrow cell. He spoke to no man, but he communed with G.o.d and Nature--his body was on the naked rock, but his soul was in heaven. It was during these years that the birds and beasts came to know and to love the gentle saint, who lived as Adam did in Paradise. He had made for himself a hut of boughs on the northern sh.o.r.e of the lake, where he spent much of his time, and we are told that the birds used to come and alight on his hands and shoulders, and sing for him their sweetest songs; and that the trees were like aeolian harps whose melody lightened the toilsome routine of his life. As for his food, ”no man knows on what he lived during these years, for he himself never revealed it to anyone.”

But now it pleased G.o.d to make known the virtues of his servant to his fellow men. A shepherd discovered the saint's retreat, and told far and wide of the holy man who had led for so long the life of an angel in the desert. Crowds of persons made their way to the heart of the mountains, and St. Kevin could no longer be alone. It was revealed to him that he was destined to be the father of many monks, and he submitted to the will of Providence.