Saturday, January 31, 2009

A bit more on the Cregagh Saint

Contrary to the impression given in the comments thread to this post, the connection between Ulster and Scotland doesn't begin and end with the Orange Order and the deluded hordes who go across to support the Mould Firm every weekend:
"Colm Cille can be seen as an intermediatery between heaven and earth, between imagination and reality, between inspiration and the word, between the spoken word and publications, between the church and the temporal authority, and between Ireland and Scotland...."

So runs the introduction by Ciaran Carson to the "Amra Choluim Gille" exhibition" at Cregagh Library which I mentioned last week.

St Columba or Columcille is a symbol of the shared heritage of the two islands of Ireland and Britain. He was born in Donegal into the aristocratic Ui Neill (O'Neill, no relation;)) family and died on Iona, off the Scottish coast in 597. "Colum" is the Latin for "dove", "Columcille" means "Dove of the Church" in Irish.

You can read more of his life and legend here.

The exhibition is well worth an hour of your time, although it turned out to be slightly different from what I expected. My own fault- Amra Choluim Gille is translated as "Elegy for Columba" and was written by the famous blind poet Dallan Forgaill shortly after the saint's death and so the exhibition deals with the reaction to that sad event as opposed to what I expected, ie a straight biography of his life. Although personally I struggled to make sense of the concept behind some of the artwork, the original poem, along with its translations, the paintings of Brian Ferran and calligraphy of the Scottish artist Donald Murray work well together as a unit. A bit of pre-exhibition preparation is recommended and to that end, the library have helpfully supplied a couple of reference books- one specifically on the images of the exhibition, the other a more general work on the life of Columba.

What was interesting is that the poem was written during the so-called "Dark Ages", a time of supposed cultural decline in Western Europe. In fact, Columba and the Celtic Church in general, were responsible for keeping the light of civilisation burning in not only Ulster and Scotland, but also NE England (e.g. the monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish born Saint Aidan, who had been sent from the monastery established by Columba in Iona). Secondly, the legacy of Columba is all over both E.Belfast and N.Down: at Moilla in Newtownards he copied a book of psalms belonging to St Finian; Knock Colmcille Church (located in present day Knockbreda) was associated with a cave which the saint was said to have used for contemplation. On a unconnected sidenote, "Knockbreda" was orginally derived from "Cnoc" ("hill") and "breadach" ("broken land")and actually, despite what you might expect, many placenames in E.Belfast have a very close linguistic connection with the original gaelic language; Cregagh-An Chraegaigh ("the rocky place"), Braniel- Broinngheall ("bright breast"), Castlereagh-An Caislean Riabhach ("the castle of the Grey Peter;)).

According to the nice American(female) librarian working there, the exhibition continues until 27th February, although their website states it finished last Friday! It was commissioned by Colmcille, an organisation promoting links with Gaelic Scotland and by the Ultach Trust, a cross-community Irish language organisation. I should also mention in passing that someone looking suspiciously like that well-known, ahhh...polemicist, Brian Feeney was there having a look the afternoon I popped in- I don't think he recognised me....

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cregagh-An Chraegaigh ("the rocky place").

Not bad, but just for accuracy, Cregagh < An Chreagach.

An Chreagaigh (pron. Kraigee) is the dative case, hence the two pronounctions today.

"Castlereagh-An Caislean Riabhach ("the castle of the Grey Peter;))."

Very good!

Unknown said...

I think you'll find that the Celtic Church was present across the whole of England - Rome's influence arrived later. And it was to England that Charlemagne turned when he needed Latin scholars as part of his attempted rebirth of the Roman Empire.

Plus of course, our Western system of dating years Anno Domini rather than "the third year of the reign of King whoever" is down to that famous Englishman the Venerable Bede.

The Synod of Whitby that tragically brought Roman and Celtic Christianity under Roman control was held of course in Whitby, Yorkshire, England.

Anonymous said...

I lament the passing of our native church wildgoose. However your missapropriation of it is akin to the Germanic English nation's missapropriation of the term British.

The Celtic church held sway in perhaps the northern third of England. And I believe that it was Bede who coined the term English, I doubt if many of these monks knew they were English. And to my knowledge it was mainly Irish monks on the continent. There are loads of cities across Germany and France with local saints who were Irish missionaries.

Unknown said...

Misappropriation?

How so?

I have merely pointed out that the Church was prevalent across the whole of the British Isles and not just one narrow part of it.

You are the one guilty of misappropriation by attempting to whitewash out of history the English contribution to that Church.

Anonymous said...

There was no "Celtic Church" in any unified sense. It's not a proto-CoE or a proto-Nationalism of any sort. It is something taht feeds into later generations in differnet ways.

Wiki is fairly good on this:

It is easy to exaggerate the cohesiveness of the Celtic Christian communities. Scholars have long recognised that the term “Celtic Church” is simply inappropriate to describe Christianity among Celtic-speaking peoples, since this would imply a notion of unity, or a self-identifying entity, that simply did not exist.[4] As Patrick Wormald explained, “One of the common misconceptions is that there was a ‘Roman Church’ to which the ‘Celtic’ was nationally opposed.”[5] Celtic-speaking areas were part of Latin Christendom as a whole, wherein a significant degree of liturgical and structural variation existed, along with a collective veneration of the Bishop of Rome that was no less intense in Celtic areas.[6] Nonetheless, it is possible to talk about certain traditions present in Celtic-speaking lands, and the development and spread of these traditions, especially in the sixth and seventh centuries. Some scholars have chosen to apply the term ‘Insular Christianity’ to this Christian practice that arose around the Irish Sea, a cultural nexus in the sub-Roman period that has been called the ‘Celtic Mediterranean’.[7] The term “Celtic Christianity” may also be employed simply in the sense of different Catholic practices, institutions, and saints amongst the Celtic peoples, in which case it could be used meaningfully well beyond the seventh century.

Anonymous said...

I have done no such thing as there was no England to speak of, perhaps there was an understanding of an Englishness but that is difficult to prove.

I may stand corrected, but in my limited knowledge concerning the Celtic church it was not prevalent in what is now central or southern England, perhaps half the landmass of the island of Britain.

Unknown said...

No England (yet), certainly an understanding of "Englishness", and perhaps more to the point no Ireland, no Scotland, no Wales nor any other "modern" nation.

I have no idea of how prevalent it was in central or southern England, but since when has the south of England counted for the whole of England? Bede was Northumbrian English, and as a Yorkshireman I am part of that same kingdom of Northumbria. I am still English though. And the achievments of my fellow Yorkshire folk are still English achievements - as Bede would have recognised back in the 7th Century when he was writing his history of the English peoples.

So yes, I can think we can conclusively state that there was an understanding of "Englishness" as long ago as that.

There may have been a sense of "Scottishness" as well. Although that would have been in Ireland wouldn't it, as I think that the Irish Scots had yet to invade, conquer and subjugate the land of the Picts.

Anonymous said...

The Picts weren't subjugated. The Gaels and the Picts combined to form Scotland. Gaelic culture predominated because the royalty of the period were exiled in Ireland during their youth, despite being Picts. Later Scotland became dominated by Lowland Scots, because that was were the Royalty and patronage was.

You really should watch the BBC's excellent history of Scotland!

Anonymous said...

Wildgoose

>>No England (yet), certainly an understanding of "Englishness", and perhaps more to the point no Ireland, no Scotland, no Wales nor any other "modern" nation.


Again you overreach yourself, indeed my original contribution was at limiting your excesses. How can you say "certainly" an understanding of Englishness? It is not provable. We already know that a Scotland existed as a kingdom before an England, yet it is not I claiming that English monks who helped convert Europe(a claim that seems to have gone missing). bede did indeed write of Englishness, but would these monks you mention have claimed they were English or northumbrian? Also if the Scots who were a minor tribe managed to do in the larger British in Strathclyde, and much larger Picts by force, how come no-one knows a thing about it?

>>but since when has the south of England counted for the whole of England?<<

Or conversley as you are doing with the Kingdom of Northumbria being the whole of England. Also your original claim was so obviously over exaggerated that even an interested amatuer like myself could pick holes in it, eg;

>> wildgoose said...
I think you'll find that the Celtic Church was present across the whole of England<<

Indeed why would newly Germanised areas retain the religious part of a Celtic culture that they had so effectively ethnically cleansed to the hills of Wales and the remoteness of the south west?

Indeed the fact that the Romanising fait accompli occured in Whitby may tell it's own story. Perhaps in safe territory?