Irish Nationality

								

Colman one day saw his monks reaping the wheat sorrowfully; it was the
day of the celebration of Telltown fair, the yearly assembly of all
Ireland before the high-king: he prayed, and angels came to him at
once from heaven and performed three races for the toiling monks after
the manner of the national feast.
The religion which thus sprang out of the heart of a people and
penetrated every part of their national life, shone with a radiant
spiritual fervour. The prayers and hymns that survive from the early
church are inspired by an exalted devotion, a profound and original
piety, which won the veneration of every people who came into touch
with the people of Ireland. On mountain cliffs, in valleys, by the
water-side, on secluded islands, lie ruins of their churches and
oratories, small in size though made by masons who could fit and
dovetail into one another great stones from ten to seventeen feet in
length; the little buildings preserved for centuries some ancient
tradition of apostolic measurements, and in their narrow and austere
dimensions, and their intimate solemnity, were fitted to the tribal
communities and to their unworldly and spiritual worship. An old song
tells of a saint building, with a wet cloak about him--



    "Hand on a stone, hand lifted up,

    Knee bent to set a rock,

    Eyes shedding tears, other lamentation,

    And mouth praying."
Piety did not always vanquish the passions of a turbulent age. There
were local quarrels and battles. In some hot temporal controversy, in
some passionate religious rivalry, a monastic "rath" may have fallen
back to its original use as a fort. Plunderers fell on a trading
centre like Clonmacnois, where goods landed from the Shannon for
transport across country offered a prize. Such things have been known
in other lands. But it is evident that disturbances were not universal
or continuous. The extraordinary work of learning carried out in the
monastic lands, the sanctuary given in them for hundreds of years to
innumerable scholars not of Ireland alone, shows the large peace that
must have prevailed on their territories.
The national tradition of monastic and lay schools preserved to Erin
what was lost in the rest of Europe, a learned class of laymen.
Culture was as frequent and honourable in the Irish chief or warrior
as in the cleric. Gaiety and wit were prized. Oral tradition told for
many centuries of a certain merryman long ago, and yet he was a
Christian, who could make all men he ever saw laugh however sad they
were, so that even his skull on a high stone in the churchyard brought
mirth to sorrowful souls.
We must remember, too, that by the Irish system certain forms of
hostility were absolutely shut out. There is not a single instance in
Irish history of the conflicts between a monastery and its lay
dependents which were so frequent on the continent and in England--as,
for example, at St. Albans, where the monks paved their church with