Irish Nationality

								

Humber, and beyond the Humber scarce any, "so clean was learning
decayed among the English folk." But the Irish had never ceased to
carry on schools, and train men of distinguished learning. Clonmacnois
on the Shannon, for example, preserved a truly Irish culture, and
between its sackings trained great scholars whose fame could reach to
King Ælfred in Wessex, and to Charles the Great in Aachen. The Irish
clergy still remained unequalled in culture, even in Italy. One of
them in 868 was the most learned of the Latinists of all Europe.
Another, Cormac, king and bishop (+905), was skilled in Old-Irish
literature, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon and Norse--he
might be compared with that other great Irishman of his time, John
Scotus, whom Charles the Bald had made head of his school. Irish
teachers had a higher skill than any others in Europe in astronomy,
geography and philosophy. Side by side with monastic schools the lay
schools had continued without a break. By 900 the lawyers had produced
at least eighteen law-books whose names are known, and a glossary. A
lay scholar, probably of the ninth century, compiled the instructions
of a king to his son--"Learning every art, knowledge of every
language, skill in variegated work, pleading with established
maxims"--these are the sciences he recommends. The Triads, compiled
about the same time, count among the ornaments of wisdom, "abundance
of knowledge, a number of precedents." Irish poets, men and women,
were the first in Europe to sing of Nature--of summer and winter, of
the cuckoo with the grey mantle, the blackbird's lay, the red bracken
and the long hair of the heather, the talk of the rushes, the
green-barked yew-tree which supports the sky, the large green of an
oak fronting the storm. They sang of the Creation and the Crucifixion,
when "dear God's elements were afraid"; and of pilgrimage to
Rome--"the King whom thou seekest here, unless thou bring Him with
thee thou dost not find"; of the hermit's "shining candles above the
pure white scriptures ... and I to be sitting for a while praying God
in every place"; of the great fidelities of love--"the flagstone upon
which he was wont to pray, she was upon it until she died. Her soul
went to heaven. And that flagstone was put over her face." They
chanted the terror of the time, the fierce riders of the sea in
death-conflict with the mounting waves: "Bitter is the conflict with
the tremendous tempest"--"Bitter is the wind to-night. It tosses the
ocean's white hair; I do not fear the fierce warriors of Norway
coursing on the Irish sea to-night." And in their own war of
deliverance they sang of Finn and his Fiana on the battlefield, heroes
of the Irish race.
Even the craftsmen's schools were still gathered in their raths,
preserving from century to century the forms and rules of their art;
soon after the battle of Clontarf we read of "the chief artificer of
Ireland." The perfection of their art in enamel and gold work has been