Irish Nationality

								

would be little wonder to see in the sombre solitude some strange
shape of the primeval world, some huge form of primitive man's
imagination. So closely did Infinity compass these people round that
when the Irish sailor--St. Brendan or another--launched his coracle on
the illimitable waves, in face of the everlasting storm, he might seem
to pass over the edge of the earth into the vast Eternity where space
and time were not. We see the awful fascination of the immeasurable
flood in the story of the three Irishmen that were washed on the
shores of Cornwall and carried to King Ælfred. "They came," Ælfred
tells us in his chronicle, "in a boat without oars from Hibernia,
whence they had stolen away because for the love of God they would be
on pilgrimage--they recked not where. The boat in which they fared was
wrought of three hides and a half, and they took with them enough meat
for seven nights."
Ultimately withdrawn from the material business of the continent
nothing again drew back the Irish to any share in the affairs of
Europe save a spiritual call--a call of religion, of learning, or of
liberty. The story of the Irish mission shows how they answered to
such a call.
The Teutonic invaders stopped at the Irish Sea. At the fall of the
Empire, therefore, Ireland did not share in the ruin of its
civilisation. And while all continental roads were interrupted,
traffic from Irish ports still passed safely to Gaul over the ocean
routes. Ireland therefore not only preserved her culture unharmed,
but the way lay open for her missionaries to carry back to Europe the
knowledge which she had received from it. In that mission we may see
the strength and the spirit of the tribal civilisation.
Two great leaders of the Irish mission were Columcille in Great
Britain and Columbanus in Europe. In all Irish history there is no
greater figure than St. Columcille--statesman and patriot, poet,
scholar, and saint. After founding thirty-seven monasteries in
Ireland, from Derry on the northern coast to Durrow near the Munster
border, he crossed the sea in 563 to set up on the bare island of Hii
or Iona a group of reed-thatched huts peopled with Irish monks. In
that wild debatable land, swept by heathen raids, amid the ruins of
Christian settlements, began a work equally astonishing from the
religious and the political point of view. The heathen Picts had
marched westward to the sea, destroying the Celtic churches. The pagan
English had set up in 547 a monarchy in Northumbria and the Lowlands,
threatening alike the Picts, the Irish or "Scot" settlements along the
coast, and the Celts of Strathclyde. Against this world of war
Columcille opposed the idea of a peaceful federation of peoples in the
bond of Christian piety. He converted the king of the Picts at
Inverness in 565, and spread Irish monasteries from Strathspey to the
Dee, and from the Dee to the Tay. On the western shores about Cantyre
he restored the Scot settlement from Ireland which was later to give