Holy Celts!

“… He will sit down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep a people inurned
and their greatness changed into an empty name.”
[Ruins Constantin de Volney 1757-1820]
Three recent popular books resurrect some extraordinary men and women of the Celtic Christian Church. Thomas Cahill, Doubleday 1995, wrote How The Irish Saved Civilization. Their monasteries were pinpoints of light during Europe’s Dark Age after collapse of the Roman Empire. In The Celtic Saints, Bridgewater 1997, Nigel Pennick describes almost three score of them in settings appropriate to their times. His book is a riot of colourful Celtic art. Celtic Saints: Passionate Wanderers by Roman Catholic nun Elizabeth Rees is much more informative. These books and various encyclopedia entries do help us, though Celtic scholars archly smile at some of the popular titles. Read on descendents; some may inspire a special name for your bab.
Often eremetic, rather outdoorsy, at times belligerent; religious Celts could be severely ascetic. Their monasteries were either remotest of hermitages or proto towns, havens for scholar monks fleeing incessant invasions of Europe by rootless Germanic tribes. And my they loved to wander. [See also my manuscript Erin O’Neills.]
Soon missionaries from Ireland were spreading out along the Continent’s dwind-ling lines of trade, founding monasteries among very tough tribesmen while a Roman Church hierarchy clung futilely to city courts ever less literate, ever more backward. Irish monks did not suffer fools gladly and so made enemies among Roman Catholic bishops. It was veneration by the people that made saints of these Celtic holy persons, not Rome.
In retrospect, a setback for the Celtic Christian Church occurred as early as the 5th century. Certain of the teachings of British theologian Morgan were thought heretical by adamant St. Augustine of Hippo who prevailed. We know Morgan’s heresy as Pelagian-ism. It was about free will and reminiscent of both druidic and stoic philosophies coupled with pointed questions such as: “Should there be one law for the rich, and one law for the poor?” So many Britons shared Pelagius’ views that the bishop of Auxerre had to jour-ney over twice to suppress them. Morgan is believed to have his origin in Strathclyde.
Romanish Venerable Bede crowed,Prosper the rhetorician has aptly expressed this in heroic verse: Against the great Augustine see him crawl,
This wretched scribbler with his pen of gall!
In what black cavern was this snakeling bred
That from the dirt presumes to rear its head?
Its food is grain that wave-washed Britain yields,
Or the rank pasture of Campanian fields.”
When Angles, Saxons and Jutes subdued most Brits, efforts to Christianize such rough invaders came less from clerics among conquered or refugee but from Ireland and their holy islands of Iona and Lindisfarne to either coast of North Britain. As a result, Columcille’s severe monastic rule prevailed in the north. [His byname is pronounced Call –um–kill and means dove.] St. Ciaran [often anglicized to Kieran] of Ireland was patron of Cornwall as St. Piran. Parishes there, in Wales and in parts of England near Ireland have names that originated with Irish saints. Crowan near Camborne recalls female St. Creweanna and St. Ives comes from Ia. However, evangelizing was far from complete so Pope Gregory the Great sent nearly two-score monks in AD596 headed by their prior from a monastery in Rome. He became St. Augustine of Canterbury. What ensued is that rich and densely populated southern England gradually emerged Roman Catholic while poorer fringes of the British Isles continued Celtic Christian. Moreover, after Norsemen settled down in Ireland and England, they became R. C. converts, not C. C’s.
Irish religionists were maligned in Roman ecclesiastical circles around 1155 by King Henry II of England. He was seeking papal blessing for an invasion of Ireland, ostensibly on grounds of reforming its Church. Pope [H]Adrian IV, only Englishman ever pope, appears to have believed him where another might have doubts.
Further pressure came from queens raised in Roman Catholic realms in the south of England who after marriage into more northern courts tried to persuade their husbands to go Roman. Oswiu [later spelled Oswy] of Northumbria had his people at court feasting while his wife’s courtiers were still Lenten fasting owing to differing dates for moveable feasts. So he chaired the so-called Synod of Whitby 664. See St. Hilda for that.
The Catholic faction included authorities who had already declared in public that Celts were schismatic. And they proved more eloquent. The Celtic religion was banished from Oswy’s and other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This fate later befell Celtic clergy in Pictland. Finally, St. Margaret got her husband, King Malcolm Canmore of a now more unified Scotland, to formally ban the Celtic Church 1069. For long this remained merely a piece of paper: last remote remnants of Celtic Christianity did not disappear from the British Isles until the 14th century.
Celtic saints, by the way, were not accorded the honorific Saint by Rome. Each was referred to as Blessed So-and-so. Blessed is the penultimate step in a Roman Cathol-ic procedure evolved to tidy up the sainthood’s avid cults.
Today we cherish Celtic monks for certain of their ways and for their fabulously illustrated sacred books. Greek letters signifying Christ on the chi-ro page of the Book of Kells have been described as more presence than ornamentation.
And now, thanks to references already mentioned and others, collated below is roughly a score of remarkable men and women. Why a score? Celts counted with fingers and toes, didn’t use dozen at all, so that older folk of western Ireland were still buying and selling eggs and suchlike by the 20s and half-20s deep into the 20th century.

St. AIDAN brought a dozen monks with him from the western Scottish isle of Iona to establish a monastery AD 635 on the isle of Lindisfarne in the North Sea off Northum-bria. It was a move for conversion of the powerful Anglian kingdom shoreside. At the request of Oswald, king and later saint, Aidan accepted this mission and a bishop’s mitre.
Oswald did all he could to assist his new bishop’s travels but Aidan [pronounced aid -in] never wanted help. Even a horse the king gave him to spare his feet was given away. The Venerable Bede wrote: “Whether in town or country, he always travelled on foot unless compelled by necessity to ride; and whatever people he met on his walks, whether high or low, he stopped and spoke to them.”
Initially King Oswald had been provided with an Irish missionary of “austere dis-position” according to Bede. That cleric gave up and went home so Aidan reproved him: “Brother, it seems to me that you were too severe on your ignorant hearers. You should have followed the practice of the Apostles, and begun by giving them the milk of simpler teaching, and gradually nourished them with the word of God until they were capable of greater perfection and able to follow the loftier precepts of Christ.”
Christianity sagged in Ireland after St. Patrick died, so Aidan went back over there to help. Once established, British bishops came over to visit him in support, arriving from Wales at his monastic hostel exhausted and hungry after an arduous journey. Due to Lenten rules of fasting all they got was oat biscuit and leek soup. They grumbled; so Aidan had a beef slaughtered so they’d have something more substantial. Afterwards the bishops joked that Lenten rule was not breached because “the bullock you killed for us had been suckled on milk and ate grass only so that its flesh was actually milk and grass in condensed form. But we felt conscientious scruples about those biscuits, for they were full of weevils!”
One Easter Aidan waited at the royal gates to enter and bless a feast in Oswald’s hall. Beggars stood there too, awaiting alms. The king came out with a large silver tray of food and distributed it, then broke the silver in pieces as well for the poor. Aidan took hold of Oswald’s right hand and blessed it out of admiration for such thorough charity. After Oswald was killed in action against Mercians 642, his hand was preserved as a holy relic to cure the sick. His cousin and successor Oswin continued royal patronage until assassinated 651 by Oswald’s brother Oswy. St. Aidan died a few days after that. He’d been an exceptional missionary and bishop, remembered too as preacher and ascetic. Many of his followers chose to depart Lindisfarne after the adverse Synod of Whitby ruling, a statue of him on the island looks heavenward, behind it a Celtic cross. A rare case of credit given where credit was due. See St. Hilda for more about the Synod.
Beleaguered British and Welsh monks may have hung back, but Irelanders willing-ly journeyed to new Anglian and Saxon incursions to preach and set up abbeys. Thus it was that a Munster noble, St. Fursey also known as St. Fursa the Visionary, set up around 631 in Burgh castle. This was a derelict fort on the Saxon Shore of East Anglia given him by King Sigeberht. This was four years before Aidan, also Irish and from Iona, reached Lindisfarne further north. Fursa went on to Lagny, out from Paris, and finally was interred incorrupt at Peronne, which became known as Peronna Scottorum, city of Fursey. He too made history, the Venerable Bede devoting a chapter to his visions.
The name Aidan is a pet form descending from an old Gaelic word for fire.

St. ANNE fulfilled a primal yearning among early Celtic Christians in her role as mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus. Reverence for mothers of divinities echoed a prior devotion to an ancestral goddess. The divine mother theme was betrayed in names such as Anna, Dana, Nonna and others with word-elements nan and non. Romans had integrated the Celtic pantheon with theirs in Gaul and then in Britain, Annona being their harvest divinity. Northmen honoured Nanna, mother of Balder the slain god. Many holy wells in the Celtic world are devoted to St. Anne and like worthies.
Her cult is strong in Brittany. In 625 farmer Yves Nicolayic in the parish of Plu-nevit in Morbihan was ploughing a field when he unearthed a statue of a woman holding two babies. It was likely of Bona Dea, Gallo-Roman earth goddess. He brought it to local Carmelites who took it to be St. Anne, being devotees of her cult. They built a chapel to house the image to which pilgrims came. It was destroyed in the French Revo-lution but a basilica was built 1870 on the chapel site. Ste-Anne d’Auray is Brittany’s premiere shrine, visited yearly by tens of thousands. See Ann[e] in Section 4 for this name’s early roots.

St. BARR –The isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland may have more antiquity than meets the eye. It’s roughly eight miles long and two to five wide. Its weather shore was immensely rocky and facing the full force of the Atlantic is gouged with caves and fissures. By contrast inland lay rich pasturage.
Three centuries ago Descriptions of the Western Islands of Scotland author Martin Martin wrote of Barra and of a saint with a chapel dedicated to him, Kilbar, to one side of the principal church on the island.. A wooden image clothed in a linen shirt was at its al-tar, meant to represent St. Barr but Martin never got to see it. Inhabitants hid it from him to prevent further ridicule as anti-imagery Protestants had done after seeing it. Author Martin was able to report that worshippers observed the anniversary of St. Barr by riding horses three turns round his chapel.
Hmm, ancient Celtic idols were most often wood carvings because pagan rituals favoured seclusion of the woods. The practice of the Celtic Church was widespread ab-sorption of paganism so had those Prods been onto something more? Barr by the way was usually short for widely favoured Finbar. So how did the island get its name Barra and why? What was the significance of circling by horse? We of the New World so often seek through a window cracked for having been passed through too many hands and centuries. When will more written down in old tongues be rendered into our own?
In the Fifth Century, Niall of the Nine Hostages, king of much of Eire and as pirate raider took the island in question. Niall was the founding ancestor of the O’Neills of northern Ireland and soon there appeared MacNeills on Barra. In the 1800s Barra MacNeills immigrated in substantial numbers to Cape Breton. My Aunt Ada Wallace [see] in Halifax was from Mac Neills thereon, her grandfather a judge then politician. So Barra and St. Barr have a family connection for us however remote such a link has become. And as for O’Neills, my maternal grandmother Lavinia O’Neill Carew was from Halifax and its environs.

St. BRENDAN the Navigator represents on a grander scale roving Irish monks as sea-farers [see Argonauts of Ireland in my Erin O’Neills]. Brendan (c.486-c.575) tradition-ally is founding abbot of the monastery Cluain Fearta, Clonfert in Galway. He started others in Ireland and Brittany.
It was thought by some that he and some of his monks actually made it all the way across to North America in the 6th century, sailing in a vessel of ox hides stretched over a wooden frame typical of early Irish boat building. The climate is believed to have been milder then. Tim Severin et al reconstructed a leather boat named Brendan and suc-ceeded in sailing her to Newfoundland along a northern, island-hopping route over the summers of 1976-77. Now vague old clues that the saint did make it across gained new currency after modern vessel Brendan succeeded in accomplishing her 50-day, 3,500-mile crossing.
Clues were in Norse sagas. They recorded two North American natives reporting that near their tribe were men wearing white clothes yelling loudly and led in march by bearers of poles with cloth attached. This is hardly a flattering description for a religious procession on a feast day with its chants and banners. The Icelandic Landnamabok mentions a country “which some call Ireland the Great. It lies west in the sea near Vin-land the Good.” Icelandic trader Goodleifr was storm-blown from Ireland’s west coast to an unknown shore. Natives there were using Irish words in their language. Further, a non-Dorset, drystone settlement was found in southern Greenland with remnants of telltale cured leather. Aboriginal hides were not cured and therefore would have rotted away without trace.
The Severin expedition relied on Navigation of St. Brendan; an account that came out in Latin around 1050 which merged two of his legendary voyages into one. Navigo was widely translated on the Continent, greatly stimulating European exploration.
The British archipelago has hundreds of islands, which formed stepping stones for such monks northwards – the Hebrides, Shetlands, Faroes – and westwards to Iceland where their presence is preserved in its sagas. Early monastics of Ireland were more than obliging when they wrote down oral legends of explorer/adventurer Bran[n] of remote pa-gan past. Some claim Brendan was really Brann but other scholars say Brann expedi-tion[s] appear to have been confined to the archipelago. At any rate, the Irish certainly have no monopoly: legends of voyages to islands of wonder are widespread in the world.
There is possibly another St. Brendan, also written Brandon, who was friends with Columba and who established a monastery at Birr, Biorra in Gaelic, just south of where Dublin would rise. He died 573, close to when our Navigator’s cables were cut for good.
The name Brendan descended via Latin from the old Irish personal name Brea-nainn pronounced [breen-awn], which in turn came from a Celtic word for prince.

St. BRIGID of Kildare is just one Brigid the Celtic Church found saintly and she’s Ireland’s favourite. Also referred to as Bridgit, Brigit and Bhride she’s certainly a striking example of early Christian adaptation of the good from ancient Celtic paganism.
The original goddess Brigid was a trinity; Brigids of light, fire and healing all com-bined in one deity. Her festival was observed every February 2nd, a milestone of the pa-gan Celtic year called Brigantia [but what about pagan Imbolc Feb. 1st?].
Looking some 1,500 years into a misty past, it seems likely that a priestess/ guardian of that Kildare shrine was converted to Christianity. The name Kildare derives from Cill-Dara church of the oak, a tree sacred to druidism. St. Patrick mentioned con-verting a beautiful noblewoman. One scholar has theorized that this is she who carried on now as a nun, Kildare become Christian shrine, devising her own rule and applying it to the immense, double monastery that came about. She was high abbess, ruling con-jointly with St. Couleth, abbot of the men. [Others have her born 450 AD in Faughart, County Louth, and best known for founding a monastery in Kildare primarily to tend the ill and the poor.]
At any rate, attributes of the old goddess shifted smoothly to this dynamic person of flesh and blood, at least in eyes of ordinary folk. [Another tradition in Ireland has her mid-wife of Mary Mother of God.] One plentiful product that her nuns were famous for was beer so the new saint was made patroness of brewers, cooking and kitchens, plus a former pagan commitment to the forge. An important new role was protectress of women after her father had beaten her publicly: the shrine actually fenced men out.
The previous faith’s set-up had involved a perpetual fire, so 19 nuns were tasked with continuing these 24-hour vigil flames. This custom lasted until around 1220 when Celtic Christian Church rituals were replaced by those of Rome. In the 1990s came at-tempts to rekindle that fire. St. Bride d. 525 never forgotten as she was made co-patron of Ireland with St. Patrick. A cross in her name typically woven of straw or rushes is placed throughout a home to keep evil spirits out and to protect it from the elements.

St. BRYNACH [say it bri – na] was born in Ireland but described as a “son of Israel”. He was chaplain of war chieftain Brychen [brih-hen] who occupied Breaknock in Wales. After Romans abandoned Britain the Irish raided and settled parts of Wales and their monks came over with them or soon after. Early medieval Christians were much given over to beseeching saints on pilgrimages to shrines no matter how far. Brynach returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to find Irish being expelled from their Welsh settle-ment. He was wounded himself yet soon managed to take up wandering with friends intent to find somewhere to settle down and worship for the rest of their lives.
At Aberguan evil spirits drove them out. At another place they were persecuted. Finally they called a halt to build a fire. They were promptly summoned by the lord of the land who hadn’t been asked permission for them to stay anywhere. Once he found out their holy intent he gave them a spot at Nevern. This is close by Carn Ingli Holy Mountain of angels where Brynach would go to commune. He was like Columcille, that O’Neill nobleman turned abbot, climbing mountains to converse with angels.
Thus the wandering Jew [for this brief period he might be called that] roamed no more. He died there 570. St. Brynach’s Church still stands today in Dyfed amidst an ancient grove of yew trees. One of Wales’ more handsome Celtic standing crosses domin-ates a little graveyard beside the church.
The first element of the name Brynach is a Welsh topographic word for hill. The variant Brynn is a man’s name but in the United States applies more to girls.

St. CIARAN (446-530) was hardly the misogynist that some Irish monks were reputed to be. O’Neill nobleman Columba for example on reaching exile in the once druid holy isle of Iona began his abbacy by getting rid of all females there – even cows according to legend.
Ciaran [pronounced keer-a-awn was one of St. Finnian’s [fin-e-awn’s] Twelve Apostles of Ireland. He persuaded his mother Liadhain [lee-ayan] to start a convent for women at Killeen. He converted a maiden himself and built her an “honourable cell” near his monastery “and gathered other holy virgins around her” according to his biographer.
Some monasteries allowed woman in their schools. St. Non is revered as mother of St. David who became patron of Wales. In Britain she is called Nonna or Nonnita and in Brittany, Melaria. Of noble blood she was attending Ty Gwyn monastery at Maucan. Sant, a king who had taken the cowl, chanced by the monastery with a hunt offering and wound up impregnating her. Angelic intervention, even early pagan druidic precedents, were seized upon to gloss over this situation. It was Non of course who really suffered but her son Dewi wowed ‘em all in the end… long after her death. Her sister got her out of Wales and St. Non founded a church in Cornwall and went on to Brittany. A holy spring in Wales and a well in Cornwall also remember her.
St. Brigid of course had her double monastery and all-woman shrine at Kildare. However, these appear to be early women leaders; nuns later had to knuckle under.
St. Ciaran was the Clonard monk who founded splendid Clonmacnois, a town of a monastery and crossroads of learning that came to be known as Ireland’s University long before there officially was one. Implacable Vikings laid it waste and, centuries later in Tudor times Mass perforce was offered in a collapsed cathedral. Even bearing in mind the smaller Irish scope of architecture, Clonmacnois and its romanesque ruins impress to this day, even in a photograph.
The saintly name often is anglicized to Kieran. It was a form of Gaelic ciar [pro-nounced keer], a byname meaning black. This Irish saint was made patron of Cornwall as St. Piran. Another Irish saint of name by contrast to the holy man of crowded Clonmac-nois was a 5th century anchorite.

St. COEL HEN is perhaps Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme, “a merry old soul, fond of his pipe, fond of his bowl” with “his fiddlers three”. Or maybe he isn’t. I often heard the words sung barbershop style on CHNS radio when I was a kid in Halifax.
There’s much more to a powerful old North British chieftain than this song pen-ned a millennium later. For tobacco wasn’t introduced to Great Britain until Sir Walter Raleigh brought it from Virginia’s first Elizabethan era plantation. Fiddles didn’t debut until the 16th century either: maybe the words should have been “pipers three”. As for his “bowl”, ale and mead were certainly available if not barley whisky, breath of life of the Gael. Wine to a degree depended on how kind the climate further south in Britain was for developing decent grapes. Gauls loved wine, taking it neat while Romans watered it. Amphorae found in Dorset indicate wine imports from Romans long before their invasion.
Of occasional popular books issued concerning Rome and Britain, Francis Pryor’s afterword is helpful in Britain B. C.: Life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans Harp-erCollins 2003.
There seem to have been two or three King Coels, and two “Colchesters” of note. A Coel most concerning us was an early 5th century North British king based in Ayrshire, first monarch of nascent Rheged as Romans fell back. Hen is P-Celtic or Welsh for old, an honorific in the respectful sense of elder. Coel is Roman in derivation from either Coeles-tius or Coelius. Coel was the last native British king to rule on both sides of the Pennines [in Yorkshire and in Lanarkshire] and all of Rheged north as far as the Ayrshire coast. Kyle district there still retains knowledge of him. He presides close to the top of most northern genealogies. Alistair Moffat writes that his kingdom is largely coincident to that assigned by the Notitia Dignitatum to the Dux Britannarium, Britain’s top military man late in the Roman occupation, “Cole Hen may de facto have been the last to hold any semblance of that office.”
These 1st century invaders of Britain had made foederati, allies, of certain North British tribes living in the Roman military zone between its Hadrian and Antonine defen-sive walls up north. That area evolved into the Roman province of Valentia. Occupiers took this new arms-length client concept of theirs back to the Continent, applying it to Gauls along their borders and some of the Germanic tribes poised along the far riverbank of the Rhine.
In bloody murk of warring northlands of Britain after withdrawal of Rome we learn of leader Patern Pesrut, Paturnus of the Red Robe, implicated somehow with Em-pire. Another name surfacing from time to time was St. Coel Hen Godebog [Godebog meant “hairy trousers”]. Coel had been educated in Rome, liked their company, and paid heavy tribute without complaint. He instigated northern dynasties as well as producing saintly offspring. Some kingdoms in Wales later claimed him ancestor. That’s because he, and neighbouring war chieftain Cunedda down from Edinburgh vicinity, went over to North Wales to help fight off barbarian invaders from Ireland. Although Coel has been linked with this enterprise, it’s also possible that Cunedda, Red Robe’s grandson, actually lived deeper into the 5thcentury.
Coel fathered saints Ceneu, Elen and Gwawl. His Elen by tradition is St. Helena d. 328 mother of Roman Constantine, first Christian emperor, but her father had reigned in Colchester, southeast England, which to later Anglo Saxons meant camp of Cole. How-ever, there was once a Colchester in the Midlands, also initially named Camulodunam af-ter a Belgic war god, but this fortified community declined over time. Almondsbury hill fort near Huddersfield may be it. Cole Hen Godebog reigned over the powerful Cornovii tribe there and then graduated to the throne of ancient Lloegres, a kingdom encompassing tribes in much of both central and southern Britain. One source says he died c. 303.
The Colchester town linked to him now is one in southeast England. It began as the camp of Cunobelinus, aggressive Brit high king of recently confederated tribes and whose heirs co-operated with invading Romans. His was a deeply endiked enclosure of almost 20 square kilometres, clusters of huts here and there inside. Sounds like a good place to keep cavalry. Romans proceeded to set up a colonia, barrack-like complex hard by for benefit of their soldiers on retirement.
Old King Cole, then, is just too difficult to pin down: significant deeds of Coel[s] cover the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries.
King Arthur likely was two rulers separated in time but now fused together in our shadow reconstruction. So our Ayreshire ruler might be Coel Hen the Aged rather than Cole of those hairy trews. The latter Cole enjoyed fruitful ties in centre and south domin-ated by former Belgic tribes, aristocracies thus linked to some degree. Welsh writings show further that Godebog was identified as prince of nascent Gloucester before ascend-ing his Midlands throne. To sum up I can find linkage between centre and south for St. Coel Hen but not at all with the north later ruled by Coel the Aged, possibly another individual altogether. That said, some chieftaincies of northern Wales claimed kinship with Men of the North through Coel and a tribe that neighboured the Cornovii.
On the matter of sainthood Nigel Pennick concluded that some kings in the British Isles appear to be early Celtic Christian equivalents of ancestral deities. Maybe he didn’t appreciate that our kingly Coels merited sainthood – in the Celtic Church’s way of thinking – if only for fighting pagans. Big pockets of old believers lived just above Wales and north into Strathclyde not to mention Scandinavian intrusions. See Wallace.
Anglo Saxons called Camulodunam Colneceastre. The given name Cole came from a surname and that in turn from an Old English word for charcoal [or would you believe a layer of ashes from Queen Boudicca’s huge uprising?]. In any event Cole once identified someone swarthy.

St. COLUMBANUS [call him call-um-ban-us] was born c. 540 in Leinster province, Ire-land, and devoted a quarter-century to the learned Ulster monastery of Bangor with its 3,000 monks. He was a pupil of St. Sinell who left to start up monasteries in France and Italy.
In around 590 Columbanus gathered the appropriate 12 disciples of his rule – harsh even by Irish standards – and did likewise. He was about 20 years the junior of Columba who exiled to Iona and stardom in the Celtic Church. Columbanus and com-panions achieved scores of success stories on the Continent in forest and along collapsing trade routes crossing what are five clustered countries today. These beginnings became important religious centres in Europe’s Dark Age; an age brought on as a Roman Empire caved in to the weight of Germanic tribes on the move.
[The Canadian aircraft carrier Magnificent lay at anchor overnight off Bangor 40 odd years ago and I was ashore in the company of the editor of the local weekly news-
paper. An enormous concrete box with row after long row of windows he pointed out to be “a monkish establishment”. We had no time to admire any parent abbey ruins but we were driving by one of many religious centres of Europe still alive and still important. Decades later Barnaby’s girl friend Uta (now ex-wife) was finishing her studies in St. Gall, Switzerland, a town built round a monastery that had been inspired by one of Columban-us’ holy men who halted there to be a hermit. In modern terms, great monasteries are described as “think tanks”. For more about Columbanus consult my Erin O’Neills.]
Columba and Columbanus are forms of spiritual reference to the dove, symbolic of the Holy Spirit in the Blessed Trinity. Colm [say call-um] is the Irish Gaelic equivalent of Columba used as a given name. The 14th century Anglo-Norman surname Columbell, which evolved through a French diminutive, still survives in England. Columbine on the other hand we recognize more as Harlequin’s tragi-comic obsession.
Columbanus, Irish to the end, d. 615 in Bobbio, Italy, but not before pissing off a number of officious but laggard bishops on the Continent and writing impertinent letters that stunned popes into frosty silence. He did leave a considerable body of work, likely more than some of those bishops managed to do.

St. COLUMBA was nobly born in the Donegal area in 521 with a name meaning either wolf or fox and both suited him. He was one of St. Finnian’s Twelve Apostles of Ire-land, and a row with the master set off a bloody intertribal war [he had a livid battlefield scar down his left side for the rest of his life]. His belligerence prompted his exile at age 41 to former druidic holy isle Iona off Scotland barely o’er the horizon from Ireland. See St. Finnian entry for a few details, or my Erin O’Neills for more about this poet, artist and, above all, leader.
His religious name was Columba [call – lum – ba] or Columcille [call – um – kill], the dove being symbolic of The Holy Spirit of the Blessed Trinity. A misogynist who was anything but lovey-dovey, this energetic O’Neill with his harsh monastic rule never-theless appears most influential of all early Irish missionary monks.
Under his abbacy Iona the tiny isle loomed large in Celtic Church matters, and for its missionary work among Pict, Scot and North British. The Venerable Bede lauded Iona for its strict adherence to Columcille’s tough methods for running an abbey. He used a rock for his pillow. The Columban rule came to be applied throughout northern England.
His power of command was such that he saved a man from the Loch Ness mon-ster by ordering it in God’s name to be off. This wasn’t much of a miracle: many have disobeyed God, few Columba. Apart from infringement of Finnian’s intellectual pro-perty in his clandestine psalter copy The Cathach, Columbia is credited with helpfully transcribing 300 worthy books including in some of his own creation a series of prophe-cies. One of these more or less backs up St. Patrick’s deal with the Almighty that no Irishman endure the reign of Antichrist before the Final Judgement: “That seven years before the Last Day/The sea shall overwhelm Erin in one great flood.”
Columbia/Columcille died at the ripe old age for those times of 77 years. The most usual modern Irish form of the name Columba is Colm with Calum and Colum its variations. The surname MacColum and like spellings survive meaning descendant of Columcille. MacElholm is the only survivor of an older MacGillacollum i. e. descendant of a servant of Colmcille.

St. DAVID (c.520-601) became patron saint of Wales. His mother St. Non is revered for his sake and for a birth with echoes of Celtic pagan legend. He was educated for ten years at the monastery of Yr Henllwyn, the Old Bush. He went on mission, going first to Whit-horn in Galloway for Bishop Saint Ninnian’s instructions before Christianizing north Wales. In all, Dewi Sant founded 12 monasteries. First came Glastenbury, then Bath, but his most famous and lasting was Meneva in far western Wales along an old land route to-wards Ireland.
His cult grew after his death. It was falsely put about that he had forgone the archbishopric of Caerleon to be first abbot at Menevia. This turned out to be puffery devised to gain his name additional stature. Competition for patron of Wales was strong at a time of many worthy candidates.
The humble wooden monastery at Menevia was transformed into stone and a great cathedral erected over many years, hidden in a hollow to foil – unsuccessfully – Viking looters. Norman-Welsh Bishop Richard de Carew in 1275 installed a more ela-borate shrine in the cathedral more in line with the volume of pilgrims. [See my Carew MS.] David had been canonized 1120, although his Menevia proved a pilgrimage draw long before that. Dewi’s enduring charm is his stress on the little things: honour God for God honours you, do everyday deeds of kindness, have mutual respect for one another. His emblem, a dove.

St. FINDCHUA’s specialty was royally cursing an array of enemy soldiery. This fine old custom recalls Celtic confrontations of yore, tall trumpets a-bray, druids shrieking curses, taunting charioteers racing up and down the battlefield. The colourful ranks, then the exultant, overwhelming charge.
When Queen Macha had cursed Ulstermen she willed them all to suffer the pangs of childbirth at the very moment their country would most need them.
Provincial Irish kings sought priest Findchua’s services for later battlefields of Ireland. He wasn’t the only Christian cleric perpetuating the practice although he was
much in demand. And monarchs who fought pagans were sainted by the Celtic Church. Our warrior-saint’s first gig was for the king of Meath. “Sparks of fire burst forth from his teeth” as the raging saint led warriors into the fray. Afterwards he was rewarded with a fortress to call his own, lordly privileges and royal favours.
Word got around. The king of Leinster looked for Findchua when his personal druid pleaded age and infirmity. The saint went into the frenzy called “the wave of Godhead” and Leinstermen followed him to glory. And the Munster king used him against Ulster. Vociferating while astride a chariot, brandishing staff instead of spear, this bellicose saint inspired yet another army to victory.
Many were the warrior-monks in Ireland. The fighting king-bishop Feidilimid [fail-a-may] of Cashel for much too long left burned monasteries and slaughtered monks in his wake. It was said he burned more churches than centuries of Vikings. A ghostly sainted O’ Neill finally struck him down alone and unawares. The sainted Findchua was known as “The Slaughterous Hero”. Author Nigel Pennick in 1997 reminded us: “Celtic saints were men of their times.”

St. FINNIAN [fin –e – ann] although trained in Wales, returned to Ireland to found six monasteries. Clonard in Meath grew to be largest with 3,000 monks. Abbot-bishop Finnian taught O’Neill nobleman Columba the latest in Christian spirituality. However, when Columba secretly copied a handsome and expanded psalter fresh from the Conti-nent, Finnian had him up before King Dairmait [dear mitt]. He ruled: “To every cow its calf, to every book its copy.” Was this history’s first recorded copyright case?
Columba had to surrender his clandestine copy. His resentment led soon to a war. The psalter was returned to him as one of the spoils of victory. Notwithstanding, he was excommunicated for a while and as final penance went into exile. As a missionary he was told to save as many souls as the war had slain, 3001. The result was Iona, holy isle from druidic times and now to be a far-shining beacon of the religion of Christian Celt.
Great men generally have great flaws but Columcille, one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland under Finnian called in turn The Teacher of Ireland’s Saints, was likely fore-most of them all. Each of them founded great monasteries passing along what they had learned at Clonard. For Finnian had been influenced in Wales by reformers Cadoc and Gildas to give sacred studies a larger focus in the austere monastic schedule.
Druidic proceedings seem to have been redacted from ancient oral history monks committed to writing. Face to face, however, cleric and druid appeared to get along quite well. Old and new schools sometimes even stood side by side. The monks who qualified after ten years of studies must have respected druids who spent 20 years learning their all by rote. The new order learned some Latin and used its alphabet and knew something of Greek classics. The old order too had more than a whiff of Greek and occasionally resort-ed to cumbersome ogham writing of Ireland, provided of course that this wouldn’t dispel any magic involved.
St. Finnian played a modest joke on the druid Fracan. It went something like this:
Finnian: Did you get your wisdom, Fracan, from heaven or earth?
Fracan: Test me and find out.
Finnian: Where will I be resurrected?
Fracan: In Heaven, of course.
Whereupon Finnian, who’d been sitting, stood up and said: “Try again!”
Early Irish were addicted to riddles. Fracan so enjoyed this little resurrection ruse that henceforth he used that very site to teach his followers and was buried there.
The seminal Saint Finnian died 549 but his teachings were taken along to bigger and better venues. The Clonard monk St. Ciaron founded Clonmacnois, which expanded to a religious centre of town size and came to be called Ireland’s University at a time when Ireland had evolved neither secular towns nor universities.
The font name Fin[n]ian descends from Old Irish finn as in fair. The name was borne by two abbot-bishops of 6th century Ireland.

St. HELEN Luydogg, Elen of the Hosts, was female Celtic counterpart of legendary St. Christopher as spiritual protectress of travellers. Wife of Magnus Maximus she is often mixed up with another British St. Helen, traditional mother of Constantine the Great. See St. Helena.
Roads across Wales are named for her such as Sarn Helen, Fford Elen and Llwybr Elen. Some Roman roads survive in Wales today. There are holy wells of Wales also bearing her name and she’s no minor saint. Many Celtic saints were of royal blood.
Magnus was Clemens Maximus, Spanish-born chief of the Roman army in Britain. He won a war over Pict and Scot to tidy things up before landing in force on the Contin-ent, his legions augmented by whatever auxiliaries he could scrape up from Britain. He aimed to be emperor of the west but was slain at Aquileia 388.
Elen, daughter of Eudaf, gave Magnus the Great seven children; five of them later recognized as Celtic saints. In all, 21 Celtic saints descend from this Roman leader. This makes him Father of Wales to some, by virtue of noble and saintly families from his issue. This, despite his rashly denuding Britain of troops for a cause he wound up losing.

St. HELENA princess daughter of British Old King Cole who died c. 303 is traditionally mother of Constantine the Great, first Roman Emperor to be Christian. Saint Coel Hen of the hairy trousers was educated in Rome and became king of nascent Rheged where Galloway and Cumbria are today. Cole initially operated from Ayrshire; led a client tribal confederacy under Romans while paying his tribute uncomplainingly. He is later reigning in Midlands England and went on to run a kingdom stretching from there south-wards. See St. Coel Hen for discussion about all of this.
His daughter, also called Elen, was educated at Trier, capital and major Christian learning centre of a Gaul largely independent of Rome at the time. The Venerable Bede called Helena a concubine of Constantius; perhaps only because the Roman Catholic Church didn’t recognize marriages performed by Celtic Christian clergy. Constantius had to make another, polipolitically motivated, alliance with the Emperor’s daughter. Helena’s son Constantine campaigned in Britain and early in the 4th century was acclaimed at York by his troops in succession to his father Constantius.
She became a Christian [late in life says one version] in her 80s journeying to Jerusalem where she unearthed what were believed remains of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. She had a church erected on the Mount and also on Mt. Olivet, and brought back to Trier what was thought to be the seamless garment Mary had made for Jesus. Trier cathedral still treasures it. Old manuscripts hint that the True Cross is hidden in Wales.
The name Elen coincides with Welsh elen for nymph. However Elen was made equivalent to Helen, from Greek “the bright one”, appearing that way in Welsh texts as far back in time as the traditional mother of the emperor. The surname Ellen survives as an early English form of Helen.

St. HILDA (614-80) was an obedient instrument in dismantling the Celtic Christian Church by hosting the Synod of Whitby 664 for Northumbrian monarch Oswiu [Oswy]. Her suppression seems a great loss.
St. Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, had encouraged this noblewoman to set up a religious house in Anglian Northumbria where she was a princess. Resulting in 622 was a double monastery of monks and nuns under her rule as abbess. Streoneshalh likely Whit-by was a notable centre of learning and St. Hilda patron of the arts. Mind you, she didn’t accomplish all this overnight. She’d been abbess of a monastery at Hartlepool and again at Tadcaster. When she came into her own she could eventually take satisfaction that five of her religious men went on to become bishops.
She was the envy of leading people for having as lay brother the poet/songster St. Caedmon. This barnhand’s talent was an overnight gift of God. We can confirm as his lines only the fragment following, perpetuated by the Venerable Bede. Modern scholars dispute that he composed poems Exodus and Daniel, so this sample coming remains the earliest surviving poem from Old English:
Praise we the Fashioner now of Heaven’s fabric,
The majesty of His might and His mind’s wisdom,
Work of the world-warden, worker of all wonders,
How He the Lord of Glory everlasting,
Wrought first for the race of men Heaven as a rooftree,
Then made He Middle Earth to be their mansion.
King Oswy had called the synod because of confusion at his court and pressure from his wife, a Roman Catholic from further south. While his Celtic Christians at court were feasting, Queen Eanfled’s courtiers were still fasting because the two churches used different dates for Easter and other moveable feasts. These and other petty irregularities all had effect on machinery of government.
With St. Hilda as host and Oswy in the chair, both factions made their present- ations. Some of the Catholic delegation had already been publicly condemning Celtic practitioners as schismatic, and their spokesman was far more elegant in swaying the king, yea, even a touch devious. Celtic clerics unwilling to convert to Roman Catholicism, it was decided, were to be expelled from all Anglo-Saxon realms. Princess Hilda bowed graciously to the inevitable: nuns henceforth would have to give way to priests [in a manner of speaking]. No more capable Hildas and beautiful Brigids by themselves at the tiller. Some Lindisfarne monks, 30 of them Anglians, took refuge in Scotland, taking with them some of St. Aidan’s bones.
St. Hilda was called Mother and founded another monastery at Hackness. Caed-mon d. the same year as Hilda, both Blesséd. In her case, a nun at Hackness and another at the home monastery while asleep had a vision of her death and ascent to Heaven. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle had this entry: “[AD] 680 …That year Hild, abbess of Whitby passed away.”
The Celtic Church was in decline. In 670 the Synod of Autun decreed Benedictine rule for monasteries in France although Brittany held out ‘til 818. Pictland shooed Celtic clerics 717 westwards into Dalriadic Scotland. Roman Catholic St. Margaret finally got her husband, Scotland’s King Malcolm Canmore, to formally ban the Celtic Christian Church 1069. Cornwall held out until the 12th century. Arrival of Benedictines and Cis-tercians in Ireland around that period heralded the end of traditional Irish monasteries. In remote areas in the British Isles, clandestine Celtic worship lasted clear into the 14th.
Part of the name Hilda means battle and several Germanic and Old English ver-sions incorporate this for girls. Hilda was short form for Hildegard and Hildgyr etc. so it was popular in England before and after 1066 although much less so by Tudor times. Hil-da revived markedly in 19th century England. Hild, Hilde[r]brand and Hildith are English surnames still.

St. KENTIGERN, see St. Mungo

St. MADRON In Celtic lands in pagan times holy “wells”, brooks, lakes and such were venerated but later rededicated by supplanting their earlier spirits with saints in the making of the new Celtic Christianity. These so called wells were by and large natural springs with stones to mark them apart and any structures around only rarely elaborate. The indwelling spirits of old had their attributes appropriated under the name of some devout Christian deemed suitable to a new hierarchy of belief. For significant dates in the calendar pilgrimages were mustered and special ceremonies held. The well waters were prepared for ceremonial drinking, bathing, meditation or prayer. One special custom of yore was adopted by the new faith when a Christian worshipper prayed sometimes for many hours while partly immersed in water, even all night. [Remember in A People Apart at the start of this Catalogue how large portions of plunder were made sacrifices of thanksgiving by Volcae in certain of their waters within what is now southern France.]
Little is remembered about sixth century Cornish monk Madron himself although the holy well dedicated to him northwest of Penzance contains water believed to cure nightmares and provided other benefits. A hamlet on the moorland is named after the saint and the surname Maddern is common in what is still only a village. Madron’s ground level basin is overhung by blackthorn bushes considered holy trees in old Celtic times. Tied to their branches were about a hundred “clouties”, pieces of cloth indicating prayers for healing or thanks for some cure. The present chapel dates from the 12th century, the earlier baptismal basin in a corner of its west wall.. Bishop of Exeter Joseph Hall in 1641 witnessed a 28 year old cripple rendered able to walk after three immersions in the stream flowing from the well. [The pagan Celtic threefold concept fitted well with the Christian trine.] The young man proved fit enough to join the Royalist army but was killed 1644 at Lyme Regis in Dorset. The spring in 1750 was guided far downhill as the first water source for Penzance and Madron was its mother church. A pre-Christian menhir, pagan standing stone, recalls Fair Slayer, a warrior or nobleman whose widow had it raised for him. In the 6th or 7th century it was re-used; a simple trefoil cross carved thereon to mark a Christian burial.
St. MAIDOC of Ferns resorted to an ancient Celtic ploy whereby an individual went on a hunger strike until chieftain or monarch heeded such a public statement of grievance. What Maidoc wanted was for God to make sure descendants of both his religious com-munity and clan were spared Hell. The saint fasted for 50 days by which time he saw a vision that convinced him that God had actually granted such an audacious request.
St. Patrick had tried the same thing to spare Ireland from the Last Judgement. Eventually he stopped fasting after a vision persuaded him God would co-operate. St. Columcille prophesied that Ireland would be flooded over before the Day of Judgement. The problem of the Hereafter and the fate of Irish souls preoccupied more of their pioneer holy men.
Political hunger strikes continue in Ireland although never so dramatic as those of Mahatma Gandhi in mid-20th century India. Of course hunger strikes immigrated to Cana-da. The last words here go to one of the more important Welsh saints, Teilo d. 580. In Stanzas of the Hearing he wrote: “It is not good to contend against God.”

St. MUNGO otherwise known as St. Kentigern or Cynderyn, is patron saint of Glasgow and the Apostle of Strathclyde, Scotland. [Wallaces held lands in the latter old kingdom.] Kentigern is from Ceann Tighearna, chief leader or ?high priest, or can be from Ceann Tighe for head of family. These are P-Celtic titles and either would seem to fit, given some poetic licence.
His mother St. Thaneu or Thenew was a Christian stepdaughter of the pagan king of Leudonia. She was raped, became pregnant and because unwed he sentenced her to be stoned to death. Instead her executioners flung her in a cart and pushed it off a cliff of Mount Kepduf. Thaneu survived the fall so next they set her adrift in a coracle without a paddle in the Firth of Forth. She drifted ashore at Culross and gave birth.
St. Serf chanced by, took mother and child to his monastery. The boy turned out to be his best pupil so Serf called him Munghu, dear pet which hardly endeared a young-ster to his schoolmates. Mungo took off to be a missionary and came upon the cell of dying Fergus. He fulfilled that monk’s wish to be buried in a Glasgow cemetery that had been consecrated by St. Ninian, first apostle to Pict and North Briton. He took over the late monk’s religious obligations. When Mungo reached 25 years of age he was made bish-op of Cumbria 543 by the king of Strathclyde.
The eager young prelate tried to spread Christianity into pagan pockets in the mountainous parts near Carlisle. This so polarized Cumbria that in 550 he abandoned the strife of Strathclyde for a few years in Wales. He is said to have met St. David there. Civil war between pagan and Christian weakened the ancient North British kingdom in the Clyde River valley and eventually it was conquered by Vikings of Ireland and England combined and soon traded off to Scotland. See Wallace. Mungo was also contemporary to a formidable O’Neill, St. Columba, and actually visited him on Iona although another source said it was Columba who visited him back in Scotland 584. Anyway they exchanged pastoral staves.
What had befallen his own mom may have inspired him to help the queen of Strathclyde when she lost a certain ring and her husband was suspicious. Mungo an-nounced it would be found in the mouth of the next salmon pulled from the river Clyde. It was, thus saving her from death at the hands of her jealous king.

St. NINIAN in the year 397 traveled north to Scotland to preach Christianity. This British bishop built his church Candida Casa, white house, at Whithorn in Galloway. It was called that because his building was unique, made as it was of stone that reflected light. He dedicated it to Martin of Tours, Apostle to the Franks, because that saint had provided him instruction for his mission and later lent masons for the special building. The old clergy by and large preferred to build of oak. Ninian also built a monastery to train more missionary monks.
Ninias or Ringan in Lowland Scots, was born c. 360 in Cumberland, son of a British chieftain. He made pilgrimage to Rome and, after 15 years of study, was con-secrated bishop and sent home to spread the faith. He evangelized north Britain and southern Scotland as far north as the Grampion hills, and even into northern Ireland. With Rome in decline and chaos at hand, missionaries had trouble covering such a large area so converts were lapsing in practice of their new faith. He was buried 432 at Whit-horn that later became a prominent centre of pilgrimage. Alistair Moffat writes that traces of Ninian are all over southern Scotland since he’d founded “churches, abbeys, monasteries and nunneries”. His medieval biographer recorded he attempted conversion of northern Picts, proceeding through Angus and Aberdeenshire as far as Cromarty Firth.
The pioneering efforts of this saint tend to be eclipsed by high-profile St. Patrick in Ireland and the later O’Neill noble Columba (521-97) from Iona. See my Erin O’Neills. Iona not only clouded Ninian’s earlier labours, the holy isle also greatly influenced British and Anglo Saxon kingdoms of the north. Iona had to be abandoned after being repeatedly sacked by Vikings.
Let Ninian have the final say. A catechism believed written by this early saint encapsulates how Celtic clerics so loved Nature with this exhortation: “…see in each and every herb and small animal, every bird and beast, and each man and woman, the eternal Word of God.”

St. PATRICK is called Apostle of Ireland. He and St. Brigid are co-patrons. Patrick then known as Sucat was captured by Irish pirates [tradition has it Niall of the Nine Hostages, ancestor of O’Neills but another source says Irish raider chieftain Milchu around 400] at the age of 16 from his home in Bannavem, Taberniae, a place that is no more. Historians say that it was somewhere on a small arc along the Irish Sea coastline shared by North Britain and Wales. Carlisle area is a favorite guess for a few miles from there is Aspatria town meaning Patrick’s Ash Tree. His father Calpornius was deacon, his grandfather Potitus priest, since it was all right for Celtic clergy to marry. The family was Romano-Celt in that our youth was a Roman citizen and perhaps noble Brit.
In Ireland, Patrick was sold into slavery and for six years was a shepherd in wood and mountain on the Slemish range in the west although one expert has him north in An-trim. He may have slaved in both regions. One day he just walked off, made it to a dis-tant port, and managed to take ship to Gaul, then home. He later returned to Gaul for study with a view to converting Ireland and duly was made missionary bishop. Twenty-six years after his escape he returned to the Emerald Isle.
Setting the Scene
Druids relied on vast memories but did dabble in Greek. They prophesied to pagan High King Laoghaire [pronounced lee rah and now Leary] at the Court of Tara: “The Tailceann [shaven crown] will come over a furious sea, his mantle [chasuble] head-holed, his dish [paten] in the east of his house [altar], and all his household shall answer ‘Amen, Amen’.” Patrick had audience with Leary and converted many before heading north to establish base close by Emain Macha [pronounced owain maha] a centre of power not quite in decline.
In theory, kings of provinces rotated to the high throne of all Ireland but in prac-tice force decided much. Nor did machinery for central government exist for continuity. The power base in Patrick’s time was in the north. He got permission from Pope Leo I to establish his archbishop’s see at Ard Macha meaning heights of Macha. This was only three miles west of Emain Macha, a mere hill away. Also sounded avvin ma’ha, we know it better from another Gaelic grammatical form An Eanhaim that has evolved to Navan.
Macha was an earth mother goddess transformed into a triune deity, one aspect of her warlike. Then we are made aware of a semi-legendary Irish queen of name. Emain Macha as a settlement goes back to the Stone Age then flourished as an important spiri-tual and cultural centre of the Iron Age. Ptolemy of Alexandria marked it a city on his AD 2nd century map of Ireland. It was long a seat of Ulster’s kings, the name of the old northern province reflecting Uliti people. Ireland’s first hospital Boin Bherg, house of sorrow had been established here by Queen Macha Mong Ruadh d. 377 BC. Ruins infer large-scale pagan rituals: a Barbary ape skull from North Africa hints of “prestige gift exchange”.
The kingdoms of Connacht and Ulster vied for north and west as shown by endur-ing heroic legends originating in Emain Macha, such as the raid led by Queen Maeve for a breeder bull. Niall was believed to be a prince of Connacht who invaded Ulster and des-troyed Emain Macha. The date 331 is now in doubt and it may have happened as late as 450 AD. St. Patrick went to Armagh about 445. Subjects rose to overthrow the Ulaid and seek protection of the Ui Neill dynasty. A satellite state of sorts arose, called the Ai-gialla meaning hostage givers. Ulaid were forced out of the territory and tolerated only east of the Bann.
Patrick and his followers converted the greater portion of Erin before he died c. 461. He placed his bishops close by key kings but left to another generation of mission-ary monks the Christianizing of the old Munster kingdom of the south. Armagh in the Middle Ages was a city celebrated for learning, at one time having as many as 7,000 stu-dents. One of the greatest missionaries of history loved to be on the move so he and his retinue trod many long paths before he was done. This accomplished without a single martyrdom! The snakes he supposedly banished should be interpreted to mean that he rid the island of some ritual excesses of paganism. The Blessed Trinity he explained by means of a shamrock: older beliefs concerned three-fold divinities anyway, which eased his way.
Scholars credit him with introducing the Roman alphabet for everyday use to sup-plant cumbersome, homegrown ogham. Mind you, his written Latin was criticized as crude and ungrammatical by those unaware it was all in metre. [One of his waggish successors, Abbot/Bishop Fergal a.k.a. Virgal, resorted to “country” Latin on the Con-tinent to help disguise his authorship of a spoof taken as true for centuries after.]
Patrick and his religious successors fortunately preserved much of previous cul-ture, committing to writing some of a vast and ancient oral tradition. Their tireless script-oria bequeathed us spellbinding lore ranked with heroic tales of ancient Greek and Rome. Just don’t expect to find details of any druidic ceremonies! Unhappily, much remains to be translated into English and Gaelic is fast waning. Patrick also helped recodify the old Brehon [breh – awn, the first element like the start of the word breath] laws of the land, which weren’t cried down until Elizabethan times. He also wrote to fellow Roman citizen and North British chieftain Coroticus rebuking him for his slaver raids on Patrick’s new Christians in Ireland. Patrick made sure it was read from every Irish altar. Imagine: raids from his former homeland!
Few cities and towns of our neck of the world lack a church named in Patrick’s honour. In Ottawa we boast a basilica no less. In his autobiography and subsequent writings his name appeared as Patricius implying him patrician, bring to mind noble/ senatorial Rome. Hanks & Hodges think it more likely a latinized form of a lost British name. His name at birth was Sucat meaning good at war. Patrick continues so popular at the font that Irishmen today around the world are called Paddy regardless of actual name or identified as Irish by “He’s a Paddy.” See the entry for his name and other bearers of it in Section 4.

ST. SEIRIOL was typical of many Celtic monks for seeking out if not deserts at least deserted places in which to spend their lives in worship of God. Early Celtic clergy, thanks to sea trade routes, were in regular touch with Syrian and Egyptian anchorite com-munities if not hermits alone in the desert.
By now you should have surmised that Celtic Christianity evolved three kinds of monk, if they in Heaven will forgive my generalities 1,500 years later. There was the absolute hermit who built his little cell by some spring to glorify God from the lap of nature. Ireland back then was heavily treed so he’d be sheltered perhaps in a grove once sacred to his pagan ancestors. Others, for lack of desert, sought rugged remote fastness – small islands were magnets – where little bands of devout built individual huts of dry-stone piled into beehive shape. Such a community only gathered together for common prayers that punctuate each long monastic day. Others joined much larger communities. In effect these became a kind of tribal town in pastoral society. The annual fair for a chieftainship took place beside its monastery. The religious community was likely run by a lay monk from the chief’s immediate family. Ireland had no secular towns until Norse and later Norman built for defence and for trade. One monastery in Wales grew so large that for purposes of administration it was divided into three communities of 3,000.
Imagine a seated Celtic monk, a vellum book open on each thigh as he copies God’s word before his little cell, attuned to sun, breeze, scents and sounds of outdoors, bird songs and rustle of little creatures, happy witness to God’s other work. When it showered, his slabstone hut proved warm and dry for copying by candlelight.
St. Seiriol was one of those who didn’t shun human contact altogether. He’d gone on pilgrimage to Rome and, on his return to Wales he founded a monastery in Penmon on the island of Anglesey, former druidic lair off the north coast of Wales holy to the old pagan religion. Romans in their occupation had to land in force twice on what they called Mona because it was such a hotbed of defiant druids stirring up the Welsh.
Back now to Seiriol. He struck up a friendship with St. Cybi who lived on the opposite side of Anglesey. They’d arrange to meet in mid island, Seiriol coming from eastwards of a morning and heading west that afternoon. That meant he always had his back to the sun, while St. Cybi always walked with his face to it. They were Seiriol the Bright, Cybi the Dark. Moral: regardless of hue both were equally holy.

When I am dead and in my grave
And all my bones are rotten,
This stone will show where I am laid
When others have forgotten.