St Patrick’s Day Celebration [Video]
Making Meaning through Our Stories
Literature - A Lens to the Past
Ireland is world-renowned for its writers, poets, storytellers, artists and musicians. It is unclear when literacy first came to Ireland. The earliest Irish writings are inscriptions, mostly simple memorials, on stone in the Ogham alphabet, the earliest of which date to the 4th century. The bulk of the ancient stories and some of the ancient poems were probably committed to writing by monks of the 7th century but are substantially pagan in origin and conception. The stories, legends, myths and songs were passed down through oral tradition, through the art of the storyteller, through the spoken word and stories of the people.
They provide us today with a lens to the past, to an early Celtic life, and they continue to inspire us today and have done so through the ages. They are a call to the ancient past, which, in turn, evokes the yearning that lives in us all to connect and attend to the inner spaces, the inner world. We yearn to understand ourselves, the calling of our heart’s longing, and our soul selves.
“The literature of a nation is spun out of its heart. If you would know Ireland - body and soul - you must read its poems and stories.”
Stories and Meaning-Making
We make sense of who we are through our stories. When we piece together the story of who we are, it helps us find an anchor for ourselves in the world. Sometimes, due to trauma, we are disconnected from that story. The story becomes much more coherent when we heal from the past. The pieces begin to connect back in. That cultivates a greater sense of wholeness and a stronger, more cohesive sense of self.
This anchoring supports us to orient ourselves towards our potential, to what we strive to meet in ourselves, the authentic life we want to step into.
This weekend, we celebrate St Patrick here in Ireland. It is extraordinary to think that for such a small country on the edge of Europe, the story of Ireland, the Irish and St Patrick will be celebrated worldwide on his feast day this March 17th.
Our ancestors, who left the shores of Ireland long ago, brought their stories, a sense of the past. A call to a sense of “home”. Even for those who suppressed their story as a way to survive and not feel that pain, the ripple still trickles down through the generations.
Patrick and Christianity
Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. There are many stories about Patrick. It is said that he was born in Wales (c.390 -461). He was abducted to Ireland as a slave for six years. After escaping, he became a priest and returned to Ireland after having a dream about Ireland and the Irish people calling him back to “walk among them again”. He did return to missionise Ireland. He used the shamrock's three leaves to educate on the mystical doctrine of the Holy Trinity. St Patrick is celebrated worldwide by wearing green and the shamrock on his feast day.
You would be hard-pressed to travel through the landscape of Ireland today and not be in awe of the stunning high crosses and monastic ruins that dot the countryside. They remind us of the ancient Christian traditions that emerged with the coming of St Patrick. Places like Clonmacnoise, Kells, Glendalough, and Armagh – were respected centres of learning and produced the most stunning manuscripts, art and beautiful objects of metal and gold. The most famous, of course, is the Book of Kells, housed now in Trinity College, a manuscript of extraordinary beauty, of the finest calligraphy and painting.
What I find particularly wonderful is how interwoven the landscape of Ireland is with pre-Christian times. The Ogham stone, the extraordinary Portal Dolmans, and passage tombs mark the Irish countryside. They stand today almost alongside the Christian monastic settlements, as a stunning tribute to the people who made them, their ancestors before that, stretching right the way back through the centuries, through time. We make sense of who we are through our stories.
The Early Manuscripts and Poetry
Some of the earliest surviving manuscripts where we can find those first written accounts included the Book of the Dun Cow, the Yellow Book of Lecan and the Book of Leinster.
In the fifth century, St. Patrick introduced Latin, writing, and the Christian creed to the Irish. When those monasteries were established, which were large, self-governing institutions and centres of scholarship by the seventh century, this was to have a profound effect on Irish-language literature, poetry included.
The earliest Irish poetry was unrhymed. The monastic poets borrowed from native and Latin traditions to create elaborate syllabic verse forms and used them for religious and nature poetry. The Irish monks wrote lyric poems inspired by a love of Nature, a love of solitude and a love of the Divine. We often don’t have the name of the writer himself. We are indebted to the work of the translators, for thankfully, we have had some wonderful translations of those early texts that we can read and enjoy today. This one here, as an example, was translated by Flann O’Brien.
Domfarcai Fidbaidae fál—
“A hedge before me, one behind,
a blackbird sings from that,
above my small book many-lined,
I apprehend his chat.
Up trees, in costume buff,
mild accurate cuckoos bleat,
Lord love me, good the stuff
I write in a shady seat.”
Written by Anonymous.
Translated from the Irish by Flann O’Brien.
Returning Home
I love reading these poems. I find them deeply contemplative. Perhaps it is their simplicity that makes it so. The soft, light rhythm of them. It quiets my mind and brings me into my body. It brings me deeply into the present moment, my senses, and my deepest soulful self.
I feel similarly when I walk amongst those ancient monastic ruins. Like the ancient Irish landscape, these early poems open up a channel of memory that brings me back into my own natural embodied rhythm. At that moment, I feel deeply connected to myself and in turn, to who I imagine that writer of the poem to be, or the maker of that high cross or Portal Dolman to have been. At that moment, the interweaving of the landscape and the poem is also within me. We are connected in that moment, interconnected as it were, across centuries. This fills me with a wonderful sense of belonging and quiet peace.
May I wish all my friends here from around the world a beautiful St Patrick’s Day celebration this weekend! May we celebrate it in full thanks and remembrance of those who came before us and in celebration of ourselves and the journeys we, too, have taken to arrive here.
I am delighted to share this recording below with you of “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate” or “The Deer’s Cry”, as it is also known.
It is translated from an anonymous source, though sometimes it is attributed to St. Patrick himself (translated here by Kuno Meyer).
REFERENCES: (1) William Butler Yeats - (pref. To Representative Irish tales, 1891 quoted in Andrew Carpenter and Peter Fallon (eds. The Writers: Sense of Ireland, O’Brien’s Press 1980).
(2) Bhrolcháin, Muireann (2009). An Introduction to Early Irish Literature. Dublin: Four Courts
(3) Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick (2003) The Celtic Realms.Castle publications
(4) Gleeson, Dermot. "Discovery of Gold Gorget at Burren, Co. Clare". The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Seventh Series, volume 4, no. 1, 30 June 1934
(5) Reeves, M.; Worsley, J. (2001). Favourite Hymns: 2000 Years of the Magnificat. Bloomsbury Academic. 