Irish Nationality

								

Tales of heroes, triumphs of ancient kings, were written in the form
in which we now know them, genealogies of the tribes and old hymns of
Irish saints. Clerics and laymen rivalled one another in zeal. In
kings' courts, in monasteries, in schools, annals of Ireland from the
earliest to the latest time were composed. Men laboured to satisfy the
desire of the Irish to possess a complete and brilliant picture of
Ireland from all antiquity. The most famous among the many writers,
one of the most learned men in all Europe in wisdom, literature,
history, poetry, and science, was Flann the layman, teacher of the
school of Monasterboice, who died in 1056--"slow the bright eyes of
his fine head," ran the old song. He made for his pupils synchronisms
of the kings of Asia and of Roman emperors with Irish kings, and of
the Irish high-kings and provincial chiefs and kings of Scotland.
Writings of that time which have escaped destruction, such as the
Book of Leinster, remain the most important relics of Celtic
literature in the world.
There was already the beginning of a university in the ancient school
of Armagh lying on the famous hill where for long ages the royal tombs
of the O'Neills had been preserved. "The strong burh of Tara has
died," they said, "while Armagh lives filled with learned champions."
It now rose to a great position. With its three thousand scholars,
famous for its teachers, under its high-ollave Gorman who spent
twenty-one years of study, from 1133 to 1154, in England and France,
it became in fact the national university for the Irish race in
Ireland and Scotland. It was appointed that every lector in any church
in Ireland must take there a degree; and in 1169 the high-king
Ruaidhri O'Conor gave the first annual grant to maintain a professor
at Armagh "for all the Irish and the Scots."
A succession of great bishops of Armagh laboured to bring about also
the organisation of a national church under the government of Armagh.
From 1068 they began to make visitations of the whole country, and
take tribute and offerings in sign of the Armagh leadership. They
journeyed in the old Irish fashion on foot, one of them followed by a
cow on whose milk he lived, all poor, without servants, without money,
wandering among hills and remote hamlets, stopping men on the roadside
to talk, praying for them all night by the force only of their piety
and the fervour of their spirit drawing all the communities under
obedience to the see of Patrick, the national saint. In a series of
synods from 1100 to 1157 a fixed number of bishops' sees was marked
out, and four archbishoprics representing the four provinces. The
Danish sees, moreover, were brought into this union, and made part of
the Irish organisation. Thus the power of Canterbury in Ireland was
ended, and a national church set up of Irish and Danes. Dublin, the
old Scandinavian kingdom, whose prelates for over a hundred years had