Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum; Or, Ireland's Ancient Schools and ScholarsHealy, John
History
Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum; Or, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars
Healy, John
Education -- Ireland -- History
There was another large fort on the Southern Island, but even tradition
has forgotten its name. There are also other remains of a similar
character in these islands, especially on Aran Mor, but even their names
have vanished from the tenacious memory of the islanders. At least one of
these ancient forts, the Dun of Muirbheach Mil, was utilized in Christian
times as a monastic enclosure, within which the oratory and the cells of
the monks were constructed. It is not unlikely that all the stone caiseals
on the shores and islands of the West, were similarly of pagan origin, but
were utilized by the monks to protect their own religious buildings.
It is quite evident to any one, who surveys these ruins on Aran Mor, that
the islands were in ancient times the stronghold of a warrior race, who
preferred the freedom of these barren crags to serfdom in the more fertile
lands of the interior. They were men of might, who loved their freedom
dearly and resolved to defend it to the last extremity. They could not
have subsisted on the naked rocks around them, and were most likely
toilers on the sea, if not freebooters as well, who seized with strong
hand whatever they could grasp by land or water; and then fled for shelter
to their insular fortresses, where they might laugh to scorn any force
sent to punish them. Yet they must have been men of bold hearts, burning
with an unconquerable love of liberty, to build their eyries on the
topmost cliffs of those storm swept islands. So we thought, as we sat, on
the lofty cliff of Dun Ængus, three hundred feet above the boiling sea,
surrounded by the grand old walls, which their hands had reared at least
2,000 years ago. And if the spirits of the dead can ever revisit the
haunts they loved during life, we can well fancy how the ghosts of the
vanished sea-kings would still revel on those lone heights, when the storm
swept in from the west, and the scream of the sea birds was mingled on
some wild night with the roar of the white-breasted billows.
It is strange that history furnishes us with no account of the final
extinction of these bold warriors. Were they swept into the sea by the
advancing hosts of the Milesian tribes? or were they the "infidels from
Corcomroe," who dwelt in the islands when Enda first dared to set his foot
on their godless shores? We cannot tell; we only know that Enda changed
these pagan isles into islands of the blest, that side by side with the
pagan ruins of sea-kings are the churches and cells of himself and his
followers, which taken together, make the Isles of Aran the most holy and
most interesting spot within the wide bounds of Britain's insular empire.
IV.--CHRISTIAN ARAN OF ST. ENDA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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