As I walk along, I think of my own past. We were poor people; my father worked in a seed and grain store, and my mother tended a smallholding of reeds and thin pasture. We lived in Leitrim, the poorest county in Ireland, a land of marshes and that evasive bird, the snipe.
I was an only child, and as I grew up, I found that I loved the sky. I believed that certain clouds came by on certain days; I was sure that I recognized their shapes. In those clouds I first saw other worlds. Sometimes I look into yet another fire on yet another hearth in yet another home, and I see enthralling pictures. Likewise in the heavens; in the skies above Leitrim I saw the great animals of Africa, the hippopotamus and the rhinoceros and the giraffe, and I repeated their names to myself for the music of the words, just as I murmured “portmanteau” and “mellifluous” and “Abercrombie” long before I had any sense what such words meant. Also in the clouds, I saw palaces—great, olden Irish palaces with wolfhounds and chariots and warriors and beautiful women.
Then when I looked down, I found beneath my feet different treasures of the world; grasses that look like blades of silver; reeds of deep red and with a sweetness of nectar in their taste; pink, struggling worms made of rings; beetles with shiny black backs. I encountered the bulrush, that tall plant that grows wild near water, its top-heavy pod made of brown velvet. And I found the ferns, wide and hospitable, ready to shelter underneath their untroubled fronds the chrysalis of a moth—or a small, dreaming boy.
In there too stood the wonderful rocks. I thought of them as people or as animals; because many of them had wrinkles, like old men’s faces or the hides of elephants. They wore little brooches of green moss, like ladies walking about on Saint Patrick’s Day. Sometimes the water from the last shower lodged on a rock and sat there like a magic pool in which you might see a face from a legend.
Next, I met the birds and grew to know them by sight and by sound. The blackbird warbled a message to me of dawn and another of dusk, thereby setting the boundaries of my day. And the wren taught me protection; the wren builds three nests each year, and two of them are decoys, so that predators will never find wren chicks in their little mossy igloo with the round door halfway up one side. And of course the snipe—I saw her as she rose from the marshes and flew in a darting line across the watered lands; that is how I learned necessary evasiveness.
Then there was the cuckoo—or rather, the effects of the cuckoo. By a nest I would find dead baby birds on the ground far below and know that, if I looked in there, I should find a young, strapping chick, black and brown, of no resemblance whatever to the species of bird who had built, laid, and hatched that nest. No, the cuckoo, up from Africa, and heard in far corners of distant fields, had laid her egg in some other bird’s nest, and that chick had then ousted the rightful heirs. From that, I learned that as soon as one acquires a position, one has created the danger of being ousted.
But I also came to know the thrush. As I attempted to peer into her nest, she came diving through the sky at me, whizzing over my head so closely I could feel the breath of her wings and see her angry face. From her I should have learned to leave well enough alone. She taught me that all property must be protected, that it is natural to fight for what you love, and that new life is all.
And so I wandered here and there, never without determined purpose, looking all around me and learning the world. Every tree taught me something; the horse chestnut gets its name from the little hoof at the end of each twig; the sycamore casts its seeds in the form of little whirling propellers.
In every pool and stream I learned something. I watched beetles careen across shiny surfaces, like ambitious men going too fast through life. In still waters beneath the banks of rivers I saw pike lying in wait. Watching the fish rise at dusk or at dawn on silent, unattended rivers taught me that for every fish, there is a bait, and every man has his price.
Although I lived in an ordinary practical world where food was eaten and liquid was drunk and clothes were worn and beds were slept in, I also saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched another life. Sometimes I got into this world through a practical gateway. For instance, I recall sitting in our kitchen as my mother served what we called stirabout—others call it porridge or oatmeal—and I began to think of the farmer who harvested the oats. Did he have a beard, and was he tall, and had he red hair and a great hat? I never had seen a human being so bizarre, yet I found this picture within me.
Next I imagined the harvesting of the grain—but I also saw the rabbits and little mice who fled the blades of the mowers. In an instant I was within their tiny homes under the earth, where they had created snug and warm safety into which they would welcome a small boy who promised to behave.
When I think of that boy now, I sometimes wish to weep. He—meaning, I—had a kindness, a soft way; never intended harm; only wished to wander an easy path through life, “looking at things and leaving them so,” as the old expression says.
Ronan searched the papers for clues, but they offered no trace whatever of their origin. He felt no fear, only wonder, that his hiding place had been discovered and breached—but not violated. Instead he had received, through some mysterious means, a rich and marvelous gift. There and then he accepted it as part of the general magic of his life associated with the Storyteller. He read the papers again, much more slowly, and allowed some of the emotion to reach him. Then he put them back, stored away in the cache. Already he knew enough about himself to delay his responses and digest for hours on end what he had just read. He walked home, feeling he lived in a marvel.
The day ended significantly, too. That night his father announced major plans; they had rented an apartment in Dublin, where Kate had found a new teaching position. Ronan would study, and she would run their lives.
John spooled it out; three years of history for a bachelor’s degree; a year more to a master’s; then a three-year doctorate study.
“Then you’ll get a distinguished chair of history in some university, and your doctorate thesis will be the first of a long list of brilliant publications.”
Ronan looked across the table. Leaving home? He would greatly miss his father—the interest in every topic; the constant good humor. But he nonetheless felt the bolts of satisfaction click into place.
One Sunday morning in late September, John drove Kate and Ronan to the Dublin train. Inside Ronan’s leather suitcase lay a tender world of new clothes bought by his father; shirts, sweaters, underwear—and John’s own treasured university scarf. Alison said good-bye at the house, awkward and reserved; Ronan saw her turn away, her hand to her mouth in woe.
They had half an hour to chatter, with John checking his watch against the calm, big-faced clock. He intercepted the lone attendant.
“Billy, is the Enterprise running to time?”
“Sir, you’ll have to ask the driver,” said Billy McGrath.
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” said John when the porter had gone.
As they laughed, the green and red signal arm dropped—five minutes. John spun away and walked to the farthest end of the bare platform, distinct in his tall gray coat, his gleaming black shoes.
“Your father’s in tears,” Kate said. “Look. The handkerchief.”
Like a white flag it emerged from John’s pocket. After much business, he stowed it and came back to them, composed, as the train steamed in.
“Remember,” he said to the two beloved faces crowding the carriage window. “No drinking out of wet glasses. No betting on slow horses. No—” The jokes died in his throat. “Oh, Jesus God Christ, what am I going to do without the two of you?”
He turned away, bleak with loss.
They clanked through fields of yellow stubble, and they swung through autumn’s leaves. Ronan and Kate sat by the window, facing each other. Such conflicted feelings—the loneliness of a receding past and the excitement of a new life ahead; so much to say, so little said.
In Dublin, the apartment occupied an entire floor, with rooms to spare. They ran fr
om door to door like newlyweds. The huge bathroom had its original claw-footed Victorian tub; Ronan’s desk overlooked a park; and in Kate’s room a pair of closet doors opened out into a major surprise—a theatrical dressing table, ritzy with lights.
They ate the food they had brought from home. In the kitchen cupboards they found blue china, and in the drawers, bone-handled cutlery. Kate opened linen napkins, and she had packed Ronan’s own drinking glass.
“Begin as we mean to continue,” she said and posed a little, swanking and swaying. “The highest possssss-ible social standards.”
They ate potato salad moist with homemade mayonnaise; cuts of cold lamb on which Kate daubed filaments of mint; small planks of crumbly brown bread that Ronan slathered with salty yellow butter. Kate heaped thick cream on the deep-dish apple pie that she had baked and zested with cloves.
From their separate rooms they called fresh and excited thoughts to each other as they unpacked. Kate chattered her way in and out of the bathroom.
“Don’t forget to write down the names of your lecturers, or it’ll take ages to remember them. And make sure you register for as many societies as you can—they’re all run by girls. Get to Registration early tomorrow, or you’ll be there all day. I wonder if you’ll have any of my old professors. Some of them were mad.”
Suddenly she said, “Come here,” and raised her hands to his face. She kissed him on both cheeks. “I’m so proud of you. But not as proud as I’ll yet be.”
Ronan had never slept in a bed outside his own home, and he scrutinized everything: a mattress that sagged a little; an ornate lozenge of orange marquetry on the polished head-board; the green light cast by the lampshades. Sleep took him by surprise, and a dream led him through fields of huge-eared corn in which strolled very tall men with high-legged dogs. This vision switched to a land of lakes where a troop of plumed, ornamented horses, like some posh circus, plodded along a hillside, while he and Kate—or someone like her—watched from a window.
Next morning he registered in a great, echoing hall, where everyone talked loudly at the same time. Within an hour he sat in his first lecture; thirty tiers of curved amphitheater benches. He looked around at the other young men and women—sixty of them, all under twenty; some looked casual, some nervous; some, airy and grinning, carried no books of any kind; most of the girls were festooned with pens.
Enter the wizened face of academe: T. Bartlett Ryle, a famous professor of history. His nasal chant preceded him through a side door, and within seconds of the professor’s opening remarks Ronan felt a whole flood of new delight.
THE MOST DISGRACEFULLY NEGLECTED PERIOD of Irish history stretches from the year seven-ninety-five to the year eleven-seventy. Those dates are in what many people call the Dark Ages. I am not one of those people. And I sincerely doubt that any of your teachers has clearly defined the centuries of the Dark Ages, so let us strap them down here and now. Most of the stuff that’s spoken about that era is good enough to grow roses in.
I dislike the term Dark Ages. Day by day, ancient texts and archaeology’s finds are brightening those centuries, and it may well prove to be the case that one day the Ages won’t deserve to be called Dark anymore. The word you should be searching for is medieval. In my lectures you’ll hear only the terms early medieval, high medieval, and late medieval. Let me see nothing else in your essays. You may write about the sexing of chickens—there’s deep sympathy around here for that sort of thing. You may write about the effect of drought upon a toper. You may write about the fate of maiden ladies who work in bishops’ houses. But you may not write about the Dark Ages.
All-right-very-well-so: Let us address them now, one by one. “Early medieval” covers, in my view, the beginnings of literacy in Ireland, that is to say, from the Confessio of Patrick circa four-sixty to the flowering of the great manuscripts such as the Book of Kells four centuries later. “High medieval” commences—again, in my view, and no other view need concern you—from the middle of this so-called Golden Age, that is to say around the eighth century, to the end of the fourteenth century. And “late medieval” takes us into, but not beyond, the year sixteen hundred, after which behavior and its record have begun to change significantly.
Many people disagree with me. That’s their problem. You have no such privilege, and you should by now be taking notes. These notes shall become your moorings for the entire course of study with me. I advise you never to permit the wide, flat—and as yet empty—barges of your intellect to drift far from the notes you take in my lectures.
Therefore, thereby, and thereupon, let us now address the significance of those two dates—the year seven-ninety-five and the year eleven-seventy. They represent two of the most important moments in all the history of Ireland. In seven-ninety-five, the modern island—“modern” being a term relative to the many millennia of prehistoric Ireland—the modern island received its first wave of outside attackers who had the capacity to establish a lasting presence in our country. This spells out our historic vulnerability to colonization, the inherent weakness in a small but fertile land.
By “outside attackers” I refer, as you know, to the Scandinavian mariners, whose oceangoing skills brought them to these shores. After the usual daily round of rape and pillage, they then settled here, and in due course they intermarried with the natives. Nothing surprising in that.
They’re not our concern this morning. Their incursions more or less halted after the battle of Clontarf in ten-fourteen, when the southern king, Brian Boru of Thomond, inflicted a military defeat upon a massed army of Norsemen. But this was mostly a symbolic victory—it proved that the Norse were vincible. It didn’t get rid of them—they had been too long ingrained here. Indeed, by then they had developed this city of Dublin, in which you now sit and I now stand.
So Clontarf was, in many ways, no more than a family fight. When it was over, and Brian was dead, the resident Vikings and the longstanding Irish all got together and got drunk, and they fought and intermarried some more, and they traded and generally got on like neighbors. That, to oversimplify everything, was the long-term outcome of the invasions that began in the year seven-ninety-five.
As to the second date, the more astute of you will recognize it as the time of the people we call Normans.
The Normans came here from across the Irish Sea, from England and Wales; sadly, they didn’t come from their own original province of Normandy in northern France. Had they done that, then the history of Ireland would have been very different.
For one thing the food would have been better—we, the Irish, would have been conquered by the French and not the English. And who wouldn’t prefer a piquant béarnaise to the brown sauce of the English commoner?
The arrival of the Norman knights in Ireland is popularly seen as the first invasion of the English. Is that accurate? Well, in common with the ambiguity of all things Irish, it is and it isn’t. (I once asked my good friend the professor of theology here if he believed in God, and he answered me, “Some days I do, and some days I don’t.”) It used to be said that the Normans came here to make Ireland the king of England’s granary, just as Julius Caesar conquered France to do ditto for Rome. No, not so; they weren’t as clever as that. But it is true that, by and large, they came here at the request of the king of England, Henry the Second—he was also the ruler of Normandy, and the men who came here were his knights—and that he later arrived to augment them.
Those of you who have managed to understand me this far have probably been told already that all history is a matter of interpretation, mostly by the victors. In the case of our little island it has been rather different, because the history of Ireland was also written by the vanquished—the repeatedly defeated, the hung, drawn, and quartered, the kicked and beaten. And haven’t we made the most of our victimhood? There’s an English gentleman called Chesterton, a decent fellow by all accounts, quite ample around the waist, who says that “the great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad. For all their wars
are merry and all their songs are sad.” He’s entitled to his opinion.
So: old Irish, Vikings, and Normans—three people on one island; my purpose here is to pick a way for you through that mixture and give you a teaching of our history since the Normans that’ll render you fit to go forth, marry decently, raise a family, live to a ripe old age, evacuate your bowels no more than once daily, cultivate your garden, or if you prefer, spend your life in low dives, gambling on two flies climbing up a wall while drinking cheap liquor imported from Rumania. I hope you’re still with me—in spirit if not in spite.
All-right-very-well-so: now let me offer you the first and most powerful fact of the Norman invasion. It had as its objective—religious domination. Are you listening to me? Religious. Domination. The good priests, brothers, and nuns in your well-run schools won’t have taught you this. But it’s nevertheless true. And the domination that was sought was by Rome, who wanted to slap down a few stroppy Irish bishops.
Pope Adrian the Fourth was the only Englishman ever to sit on the Vatican throne—a British pope is as rare as a hen’s tooth. He became aware that the church in Ireland, which had always been inclined to go its own way, showed signs of taking little interest in what its guiding fathers had to say. Its immediate guiding fathers dwelt in England, in Canterbury, whose archbishop to this day presides over the Church of England, and in those days Canterbury was a kind of suboffice to Rome.
But—you’re saying to yourselves—hold on, here. Isn’t the archbishop of Canterbury a Protestant?
As I look at your faces, I am thankful to find few struggles there, because you all seem to realize that this was some centuries ahead of the Reformation, before which there was no such thing as a Protestant. Some of you may long wistfully for that day—but that’s a matter between you and your God.
In eleven-fifty-two the archdiocese of Dublin had a heady moment and decided flat-out it wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Canterbury. Dublin was still sore at having lost the church politics of these islands in the Synod of Whitby six hundred years earlier.