Irish saints and the making of Irish culture

A Dictionary of Irish Saints, Second Edition,

by Pádraig Ó Riain

(Four Courts Press, €65.00 / £55.00)

This is a new edition of an important, indeed for some purposes, essential book, which was warmly welcomed by The Irish Catholic when it was first published back in 2011. At that time I wrote that this was a “simply splendid book” which “could not be recommended highly enough,” as it provided “an almost complete Irish hagiography”.

This second edition is not a mere matter of a few cosmetic alterations, as is so often the case with new editions. In fact it is the result of a resolute course of research that began as soon as the first edition appeared, the author making special preparations to note the results of new material and ideas, as well as such corrections and additions as were suggested to him.

Before noting what has been done to make the book even more valuable, I would like to emphasise a matter of importance which should not be overlooked by the general reader.

Culture

The lives of the Irish saints that began to be written in the centuries after the general adoption of Christianity in Ireland in the fifth century mark an important stage in the development of our island culture. They mark, indeed, the true beginning of the Irish literary tradition as we know it.

Ireland before Christianity was an oral culture, it had no writings, everything that ought to be remembered was committed to memory. This oral culture continued of course through the following centuries. But once the Irish began to create books something new began, a literary tradition that continued to this very day. What needed to be remembered was, hopefully, committed to writing.

Even the young and brightest star whose genius is being praised in other papers this week is conscious of those 1500 years of tradition in some little way”

It is hardly surprising this being so that materials from these centuries was made use of by many modern Irish writers. I have in mind The Bright Temptation by Austin Clarke (1932), Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two Birds (1939), The Unfortunate  Fursey (1946) and its sequel by Mervyn Wall, and perhaps by a liberal extension, The Holy Sinner (1951) by Thomas Mann.

The interest in Early Christian Ireland has declined in recent decades, as Irish writing in English at least has become ever more a part of the Anglo-American literary sphere. But even the young and brightest star whose genius is being praised in other papers this week is conscious of those 1500 years of tradition in some little way. For once the Irish started writing books they have never ceased!

The original edition of Professor Ó Riain’s book ran to some 660 pages. The second to 683 – a mere 23 pages it might seem. Yet this has meant small changes throughout the whole text, largely it seems in refinements of interpretation.

Living as I do in Donnybrook I turned naturally to see what was now to be said about the saints of that parish. Ó Riain in this case has found little enough, beyond the association in Norman times of St Beagnad of Kilbegnet with the place as a patron.

Tradition

Local tradition, however,  claimed that the place is Domhnach  Broc, the church of Broc, a holy lady whose well used to be pointed out in the grounds of a large house at the bottom of Eglinton Road. During  recent developments  this was rubbed out, which led to protests, after which the developer “restored” a well to please the locals. This well, a dry one, is not on the correct site at all.

All of this just goes to show that shroud of misty piety that surrounds so many local “saints”.  With these, scholarship has difficulties. The materials to unravel the matter simply do not exist. But Dublin is a special case being too well settled  by Vikings, Normans and English to have any real traditions such as these pages well document from elsewhere.

This book is already established as an essential resource for local historians”

The twenty six pages of sources gives the reader a vivid impression of just how large the records are. He alludes to earlier compliers, such as Colgan and others. Of these industrious Canon of Hanlon of Sandymount was the most industrious, for he was also interested in folklore, and topography. He engaged artists and engravers to embellish his pages with vignettes of many places associated with local saints which remained of the highest value.

(One still has to wonder, though, what actually became of those manuscript   pages of the November and December volumes of his series which he never got to compete, let alone publish. They disappeared into oblivion on his death and seem never to have been rediscovered. )

This book is already established as an essential resource for local historians. Their continuing research may, by some stroke of luck, akin perhaps to the recovery of the Derrynaflan Chalice, make further discoveries of sources as yet unknown. There is never an end to research once begun.