A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present DayHyde, Douglas
History
A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day
Hyde, Douglas
Civilization, Celtic, in literature; Irish literature -- History and criticism; Language and culture -- Ireland
Cluain Eidnech, or Clonenagh, the "Ivy Meadow," was founded by St.
Fintan, near Maryborough, in the present Queen's County. Angus the
Culdee, who with its Abbot Maelruain is said to have composed the
Martyrology of Tallaght prior to 792, was its greatest ornament. Of his
Irish works we shall have more to say later on. Clonenagh suffered so
much from the Northmen, that its great foundation had already in the
twelfth century dwindled to a parochial church; in the nineteenth it is
a green mound.
Glendalough, founded by the celebrated St. Kevin,[21] became also a
college of much note. St. Moling, to whom a great number of Irish
poems[22] are ascribed, was one of his successors in the seventh
century, and his life seems to have taken peculiar hold upon the
imagination of the populace, for he has more poems--many of them
evident forgeries--attributed to him than we find ascribed to any of
the saints except to Columcille; and he has a place amongst the four
great prophets of Erin.[23] It was he who procured the remission of
the Boru tribute from King Finnachta about the year 693. Glendalough
was plundered and destroyed by the Danes five times over, within a
period of thirty years, yet it to some extent recovered itself, and the
great St. Laurence O'Toole, who was Archbishop of Dublin at the coming
of the Normans, had been there educated.
Lismore, the great college of the south-east, was founded by St.
Carthach in the beginning of the seventh century, who left behind him,
according to O'Curry, a monastic rule of 580 lines of Irish verse.[24]
Cathal, or Cathaldus, born in the beginning of the seventh century, who
afterwards became bishop and patron saint of Tarentum, in Italy, was
a student, and perhaps professor in this college. The office of St.
Cathaldus states that Gauls, Angles, Irish, and Teutons, and very many
people of neighbouring nations came to hear his lectures at Lismore,
and Morini's life of him expresses in poetic terms the tradition of
Lismore's greatness.[25] St. Cuanna, another member of Lismore, was
probably the author of the Book of Cuanach, now lost, but often quoted
in the Annals of Ulster. He died in 650, and the book is not quoted
after the year 628, which makes it more than probable that he was the
author. Lismore was burnt down by the Danes, but recovered itself in
the general revival of native institutions that took place prior to the
conquest of the Anglo-Normans. However, when these latter came upon the
Irish stage it fared ill with Lismore. Strongbow, indeed, was bought
off from burning its churches in 1173 by a great sum of money, but in
the following year his son, in spite of this, plundered the place. Four
years later the English forces again attacked it, plundered it, and
set it on fire. In 1207 the whole town and all about it was finally
consumed, so that at the present day not a vestige remains behind of
its schools, its cloisters, or its twenty churches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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