CHAPTER XXVII

LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND

WHEN long ago the English poet Spenser, in his "State of Ireland" set down: "For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very auntiently and long before England; that they had letters auntiently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish" he was possibly not aware that even for centuries before the English began to value learning, and in shiploads flocked to Ireland to obtain it, Ireland's valleys were dotted with schools, and her hillsides hummed with studying scholars. Babington in his Fallacies of Race Theories says that in the sixth century, "the old culture lands had to turn for some little light and leading to that remote and lately barbarous land" (Ireland).

Says the medievalist, Arséne Darmesteter: "The classic tradition, to all appearance dead in Europe, burst into full flower in the Island of Saints. The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation."

And our own Doheny puts it as gracefully as truthfully (in his Memoir of Keating): "The early literary history of Ireland stands out distinct from that of any other country of Europe. While the revel of the Goth profaned the Roman forum and he stabled his steeds in the Coliseum, the pilgrims of learning from every darkened land found shelter, sustainment, and inexhaustible sources of information, in Ireland."

The late Professor Zimmer, most eminent of Celtologists, states in his remarkable little work, The Irish Element in Mediæval Cul

ture:

"Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries, at a time when the Roman Empire was being undermined by the alliances and inroads of German tribes, which threatened to sink the whole Continent into barbarism, but also of having made strenuous efforts in the seventh and up to the

tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation."

It is interesting to speculate upon the certain antiquity and activity of that learning as far away as the sixth century, when it would give fruitful soil for the planting of such abiding tradition as that of the fall of the book-satchels1 at the death of Longarad, "master of study and jurisprudence, history and poetry."

"This is said," says Aongus in the Feilire, "that on the night of Longarad's death Ireland's book satchels and her Gospels, and books of instruction fell from their shelves, as if they understood that never again would there come any one like Longarad.

"Lon is dead (Lon is dead);

To Cill Garad it is a great misfortune;

To Eirinn with its countless tribes;

It is a destruction of learning and of schools.

"Lon has died (Lon has died);

In Cill Garad great the misfortune;

It

a destruction of learning and of schools,

To the Island of Eirinn beyond her boundaries."

One tradition even has the book satchels of Iona falling on this grievous night. They fell in the cell of Colm Cille, who, with the vision of the saint, exclaimed, "Longarad, master of every art in Ossory, is dead." "Long may it be till that comes true," exclaimed the shocked Baithin. To which the impetuous Colm answered: "Misbelief be in thy successor."

Most of the Irish scholars and Continental students of Celtic lore, like Zimmer, agree that when Patrick came, in the early part of the fifth century, he found there such a plenitude of learning and learned men as necessitated a background of previous centuries of educational progress. When the reputation has descended to us of at least two most notable pre-Patrician Irish scholars on the Continent, it is a practical conclusion that there were dozens of others abroad also, whose memories have been submerged in the sweep of the ages. And, interchange of the cream of foreign learning with native Irish learning on Irish soil must have occurred with frequency, in the ages immediately succeeding Patrick, if we accept the learned Petrie's conclusion (in his Inquiry into the Origin and

1 The polaires or leathern cases in which the volumes of those days were kept-hung upon the walls.

Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland) that "Crowds of foreign ecclesiastics, Egyptian, Roman, Italian, British and Saxon, flocked to Ireland, as a place of refuge, in the fifth and sixth centuries. Of such emigration there can not possibly exist a doubt."

And then there was the exchange of Irish with Continental learning which occurred as a result of the many and great pilgrimages that in Ireland's earliest Christian days were constantly being made to Rome and to the Holy Land by crowds of Erin's faithful. These pilgrimages sometimes extended over years, the pilgrim frequently making wide detours for purpose of visiting temples of the famous living, and shrines of the hallowed dead-and often sojourning for months and seasons in the neighbourhood of a famous preacher and teacher, or at institutional centres of piety and learning.

Besides the dozens of incidental references to such with which the ancient records teem, Petrie cites the testimony in the famous Litany of Aongus Ceile Dé: "The three times fifty canoes full of Roman pilgrims who settled in Ui Mele, along with Notal Nemshenchaid and Cornutan, invoco in auxilium meum per Jesum Christum, etc. The other thrice fifty pilgrims of the men of Rome and Latium who went into Scotia, invoco in auxilium meum per Jesum Christum. The thrice fifty Gaedhils of Eirinn, in holy orders, each of them a man of strict rule, who went in one body into pilgrimage, under Abban, the son of Ua Cormaic, invoco in auxilium meum per Jesum Christum," etc.

Within two centuries after Patrick, George Stokes (Knowledge of Greek in Ireland) shows that in the very centre of the bog of Allen, in Durrow, there was "a wide range of deep learning, chronological, astronomical, and philosophical." And Joyce says that the earliest of the seventh or eighth century glosses, published by Zeuss, testify to the fact that "the written language of the Irish was then fully developed and cultivated, with a polished phraseology and an elaborate system of grammar, and having fixed and well established written forms for all its words, and for all the rich inflections."

It was Zimmer's opinion that at least the classical learning for which Ireland in those very early centuries became noted, Latin and Greek, were brought there by the many learned people from Gaul who fled to Ireland, the haven of refuge from the overwhelming tide of barbarism, which was sweeping Europe in the fifth

2 An embassy sent from the Irish ecclesiastics to Rome, in 631, was three years absent-and such embassy, naturally, did not journey with the same leisure as did pilgrims.

century. But the fact that these learned ones should flock to Ireland is in itself partial proof that the fame of Ireland then as a home of learning must have been fairly well established. The brilliance of her beacon must have beckoned these affrighted ones, and the repute of her schools and scholars been ringing in their ears. Whether or not it was those very early scholar refugees, in those early ages, who brought some knowledge of Greek into Ireland, in addition to Latin, M. Darmesteter expresses his astonishment at finding, a couple of centuries later, Greek taught in Ireland when it had become forgotten elsewhere, and when even such a noted scholar as Pope Gregory the Great was ignorant of it. But Zimmer acknowledges that in Ireland, "the standard of learn. ing was much higher than with Gregory and his followers. It was derived without interruption from the learning of the fourth century, from men such as Ambrose and Jerome. Here also were to be found such specimens of classical literature as Virgil's works among the ecclesiastical writings, an acquaintance with Greek authors as well, besides the opportunity of free access to the very first sources of Christianity." "The knowledge of Greek," says Professor Sandys in his History of Classical Scholarship, "which had almost vanished in the west was so widely dispersed in the schools of Ireland that if any one knew Greek it was assumed he must have come from that country.'

And the eminent Celtologist, De Jubainville, talking of the Irishman, Columbanus, who, in the sixth century, was evangelising and teaching in Burgundy and Lombardy, says: "We only need to glance at his writings to be at once convinced of his wonderful superiority over Gregory and the Gallo-Roman scholars of his time."

As early as the fifth century, scholars from Wales, Cornwall, Brittany were coming to Ireland for schooling; or were, at home, receiving tuition from the Irish schoolmaster who had even then begun to travel as an educational missionary. Lannigan (in his Ecclesiastical History of Ireland) tells us that the Welsh historian, Gildas, came to Ireland, probably in the middle or end of the fifth century, "to perfect himself in philosophy and theology." He attended several schools there, and finally, according to his countryman, Caradoc, became a teacher at the school of Armagh. He returned to Wales when he heard of his brother being killed by King Arthur. Gildas' Welsh contemporary, St. Caradoc (who was Irish on his mother's side), attended as a boy the celebrated school of Caer, in Monmouth, taught by the Irishman, St. Tathæus. Petrocus from Cornwall was studying the Scriptures in Ireland for twenty

years. The Breton St. Paternus was some time in Ireland; and his father Petranus retired to lead a holy life in Ireland-in the beginning of the sixth century.

Then we have the testimony of the Venerable Bede, the Saxon ecclesiastical historian, who, writing in the very shadow of the time of which he spoke, and describing the great plague of 664, says: "This pestilence did no less harm in the neighbouring Island of Ireland. Many of the nobility, and of the lower ranks of the English nation were there at that time, who in the days of Bishops Finan and Colman, forsaking their native land, retired thither, either for the sake of divine studies, or of a more continent life; and some of them presently devoted themselves to the monastical life; others chose rather to apply themselves to study, going about from one master's cell to another. The Scots (Irish) willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with food, as also to furnish them with books to read, and their teaching, gratis."

Patrick and his followers founded Christian schools to supersede those of the Druids. Patrick's school of Armagh became one of Ireland's greatest-attended at a later time by (says Keating) as many as seven thousand students. This school was a favourite resort of the Saxons, who had in the city their own quarter, called Trian Saxon. Ibar of Beg-Eire and Ailbe of Emly, Patrick's contemporaries, and his convert Mochae the swineherd of Oendrum, St. Fiach of Sletty, Olcan of Dercan, St. Mochta of Louth amongst others, had each his school in Patrick's day.

Together with crowds of lesser ones, then followed the noted schools of Colman at Dromore, Enda at Aran, Jarlath near Tuam, Finian at Moville, the greater Finian at Clonard, Comgall at Bangor, Ciaran at Clonmacnois, of Kevin at Glendalough, of Senan at Inniscathy, of Brendan at Clonfert, of Mobi at Glasneven, of Finbar at Cork, of Fachtna at Ross, of Finan at Innisfallen, of Colm at Iniscaltra, of Carthach at Lismore-and numberless othersat Roscrea, Slane, Cashel, Inisbofin, Kildare, Limerick, Fore, etc., all of such importance that their fame has come down to the present day. And again and again the records and traditions intimate that several of these schools had thousands of scholars in attendance. We are told that there were two thousand students at Kevin's school at Glendalough, three thousand at Finian's school at Clonard; three thousand at the school of Comgall at Bangor-and that Clonmacnois at the height of its fame was attended by between six thousand and seven thousand students.

So famous and great did the school of Clonmacnois become that many of the leading families of Ireland had there each its own