NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 5 June 1919, Page 26

NOTES

The Coming of Patrick This week we select a few fine word-pictures of the Celtic past from Shane Leslie’s St. Patrick’s Purgation/ . The first is from a sketch which tells us how to an old warrior-king on his death bed there came a Druid, and how they foresaw the end of paganism and the birth of Christianity in Ireland : On a sudden a white figure rose at the lowest of the earth-walls and came slowly up the height. He was a tall man with the crooked neck of age upon him and angry eyes in his wise face. . . As he passed the fighting men turned to watch him, but shivered as they let him by. “It is Torna, the Druid,” they whispered. He had reached the palace door by now. Under the heavy log lintels he passed, with his white robe gathered in his fingers. The King lay in a restless slumber, and saw not his visitor entering. In his hard agony he turned this way and that. Gouts of blood crawled down his stiffening limbs and dyed the badger skins and fox skins of the bed. Torna waited beside him as an old crane that stands near the ebbing tide. At last the King woke. ... “Torna, I am very glad of thy coming; Torna, I have cried for thee since I was borne from the battle.” “I am not glad little glad am I to see the hand that was once full'of gifts bitten by the, sword.” There was a pause, and the King spoke. “Torna, there are strange clouds gathering over my eyes, not the joyous mist that rises in the wine-cup, but the blackness of rain in the night time. . Torna, Torna of the Druids, Torna, wiser than wisdom, is it death that is come upon me?” / “A smaller wisdom than mine can see that thy cloud is one that cometh but once over a man.” With a cry the King turned back to his troubled slumbers. He seemed to mutter, and after a while . , , “Strange dreams come over me and lie before me and behind me, Torna, for already I think I see my own spirit sitting at the cold hearth of the dead ; and it is not well with them. Again, I see strangers sitting among the High Kings of Erin. . . Torna, I see grief for you and for all the white magic of the Druids.”

“Long have I known that grief is coming upon us, O King! . . . There cometh an adze-head, with a crook-head staff in his hand, and he will chant a song unholy from.his table, and his household will be answering, Amen.” ‘

“I see a Druid that is no Druid sitting with the wise men of Ireland and his robe is as brown as the peat.”

“That is he, O King! That is Patrick, the fisher of men.”

“Who is Patrick, and what is the way of his fishing?” “He is the love-friend of Jesus, whom men call the King of the Wounds, but I can tell thee little of his fishing save that he hath nets laid over the high hills of Ireland.”

“Torna, would my sword be easy cutting the nets of Jesus?” and the King folded , his cold. .bed-fellow, for in those days the Kings of Ireland honored their swords by night as well as by day. “No, O King! your sword cannot avail you, for the Queen of Heaven has woven the nets out of the floating treasures of the sea, and the spirits of men will he lying in them like the silver herrings in the folds of a rope-net.” " : ~

, For the last time the old warrior- drew himself up from his clotted couch : ' “Torna,: what is the wild music that reaches ’ my ear from every hill in Ireland I know well the red music that plays men into battle and the white music that sings to us feasting, but this is neither one or the other.” - “It is the bells that the friends of Jesus are ringing throughout the land.’* . . . The Druid sobbed “They are ringing them against the death of the Druids.” How the Monks Lived at Lough Derg From the story of “The Vision of Dabheoc” we, quote the following beautiful picture of the labors of the early Irish monks: 1 “There was a band of young men who made their way over the mountains to join the rule. Though they found it hard enough to the body, it seemed sweet to the soul.' But their number increased and no little strength and prosperity was added to them. The younger brethren built huts of strongly woven twigs, and laid out an apple-garden and a herb-garden. Above all the work of their hands was the great chapel of timber wood. They had raised every beam by their own labor, and they had filled it with the untiring song of their lips. Day by day, like the bee-folk in the heather, they followed out their chosen rule, and kept their lives sweet with, activity. Some had turned to the digging of the soil, and planted seeds and herbs, till they won to themselves the wisdom of plants and the healing of leaves. “Others betook themselves to writing on parchments and painting the Gospels with colors they had picked oil the rocks. In those days the making of books was long and troublesome, even to the wearing of men’s lives. First, there were designs to be pencilled by the best craftsmen in the monastery. And then others would sit day by day over one smooth page spreading the little rivers of red and yellow through and round the lettering, little rivers that wound about the pages,' with bright purple banks curling and folding in and out, vet never breaking over the line or letting a purple sod drop into the yellow stream. “It was on the initial of Christ that they lavished the whole wealth of their brushes. Round the Sacred Letter with an unbroken exactitude they twined the glorious bordcry. line upon line, curve out of curve, wreath into wreath. They gathered into one page the colors of the sky and the beauty of the earth, the burnished mail of dragons, and the slender shapes of mountain grass. If men wonder to-day at the love and endurance that wrought such books to perfection, it is because they do not understand the mind of the writers who would have, deemed their whole lives too short, and the very blue of heaven and the red of their own blood unworthy stuff to emblazon the name of the Eternal. . “In aftertime these same books with their metal coverings were found as far apart as the plains of Italy and the white floes of Iceland. A strange and lovely witness to those same children of Patrick, who mingle their sleep in the vineyards of the south and in the ice-beds of the north.” A Dark Page There was one dark page in the annals of Lough Derg. Here it is: “Upon an ill day was sin done in the island of the cave itself. It happened in this wise. There was a certain Crusader, TJgolino, who, with his humble squire, had fought valiantly against the hateful Saladin. In time the squire became the bosom friend of his master, but the latter was no little displeased when he learned that his sister, Madeleine, had turned eyes of love upon him. In the bitter end their love continued, and Ugolino, rather than let his proud blood mingle with any of lowlier stock, slew his own sister. Filled with anguish of remorse he fled out of his own country to the ends of the world. As he had won glory

in the east he now turned for his penance to the west. By land and sea and fen he made his way to the islands that lay in the setting sun. . ' Yet one followed ,him by every path and journey, his once faithful squire,, bearing in his bosom a dagger still stained with Madeleine’s blood. '. . When he reached Derg the avenger was upon him, and missed slaying him at the ferry but by . a minute’s breath. . . The next day Ugolino was praying on the stone beds at sunset, crying for peace even at the price of his own blood. His prayer was heard. Quick as a hawk a figure passed aside from a passing train of pilgrims and buried a dagger to the hilt in his shoulders. Then it leapt into the shadowy water and disappeared for ever.”