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The Daltaí Boards » Archive: 2005- » 2010 (March-April) » Archive through April 03, 2010 » From The New York Times « Previous Next »

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Pádraig
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Username: Pádraig

Post Number: 834
Registered: 09-2004


Posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 10:17 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Turning Green With Literacy

By THOMAS CAHILL
Published: March 16, 2010
WHY should we celebrate the Irish?


No doubt, several reasons could be proffered. But for me one answer stands out. Long, long ago the Irish pulled off a remarkable feat: They saved the books of the Western world and left them as gifts for all humanity.

True enough, the Irish were unlikely candidates for the job. Upon their entrance into Western history in the fifth century, they were the most barbaric of barbarians, practitioners of human sacrifice, cattle rustlers, traders in human beings (the children they captured along the Atlantic edge of Europe), insane warriors who entered battle stark naked. And yet it was the Irish who were around to pick up the pieces when the Roman Empire collapsed in the West under the increasing assaults of Germanic tribes.

It is hard to overstate the momentousness of that collapse. By the early sixth century, Western Europe had become largely illiterate, its teachers dead, its students on the run, its libraries turned into kindling. Ireland, however, had just settled down, thanks to a tough old bird named Patrick, a Roman citizen raised in the province of Britain who had been grabbed by Irish slavers when he was a teenager. It was after his escape that Patrick resolved to seek priestly ordination and return to Ireland to preach the Gospel.

The glories of Christianity — particularly its books — fascinated the Irish. They came to love the Roman alphabet that Patrick and his successors taught them, as well the precious illuminated manuscripts that he presented to them. There was indeed nothing in their intellectual heritage to block their receptivity to the Christian faith.

There was also nothing in their heritage to draw them to master the intricacies of the Greco-Roman tradition. This turned out to be a stroke of luck, for the ancient Irish never embraced classical cynicism or the gloomy Greco-Roman sense of fatedness.

Instead, they remained in many ways remarkably unjaded, full of wonder at the unexpectedness of human life. “Well, the heart’s a wonder,” says Pegeen Mike in John Millington Synge’s comedy “The Playboy of the Western World.” It was a sentiment first articulated by Patrick’s converts, who put down their weapons and took up their pens. They copied out the great Greco-Roman books, many of which they didn’t really understand, thus saving in its purest form most of the classical library.

The Irish fanned out across Europe, salvaging books wherever they could, making copies, reassembling libraries and teaching the newly settled barbarians of the continent to read and write.

But they did more than this: they managed to infuse the emerging medieval world with a playfulness previously unknown. In the margins of the books they copied, the Irish scribes drew little pictures, thickets of plants, flowers, birds and animals. Human faces occasionally peek through the tangle, faces of childlike delight and awe. If you were a scribe copying out some especially ponderous philosophical Greek, the margin in which you could reflect on your own world served as a source of “refreshment, light and peace,” to quote the ancient Latin liturgy. These scribal doodles eventually became elaborate design elements, leading the way to Irish masterpieces like the Book of Kells.

The scribes also contributed jokes, poems and commentary to the works they replicated, saving for us a world of fresh insights. One scribe, tortured by the difficult Greek he was copying, wrote: “There’s an end to that — and seven curses with it!” Another complained of a previous scribe’s sloppiness: “It is easy to spot Gabrial’s work here.” A third, at the bottom of a tear-stained page, tells us how upset he was by the death of Hector on the Plain of Troy. In these comments, sharp and sweet by turns, we come in contact with the sources of Irish literary humor and hear uncanny echoes of Swift, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett.

One scribe leaves us a charming poem about his cat, who hunts mice through the night while the scribe hunts words. Another, presumably a female scribe, describes a young man in four brief lines:

He’s a heart,

He’s an acorn from an oak tree,

He’s young.

Kiss him!

A third scribe (for they were not all monks and nuns) wonders who will sleep tonight with “blond Aideen.” (It’s quite certain someone will.)

The quotations above are English translations from the Irish, the first vernacular language of Europe to be written down. In this way, the Irish initiated what would eventually become the great torrent of European national literatures.

We have many reasons to be grateful to St. Patrick and his fierce and playful Irishmen and Irishwomen. So on this St. Patrick’s Day, remember them as they would wish to be remembered. Read a book.

Thomas Cahill is the author of “How the Irish Saved Civilization.”

Is ait an mac an saol agus fáilte roimh cheartúcháin.

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Asarlaí
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Username: Asarlaí

Post Number: 287
Registered: 01-2005


Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 09:30 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

I'm sorry Patrick, but it's quite astonishing that so called experts are still spewing out such disgraceful propaganda about the Irish and the original inhabitants of these tiny western islands.

"True enough, the Irish were unlikely candidates for the job. Upon their entrance into Western history in the fifth century, they were the most barbaric of barbarians, practitioners of human sacrifice, cattle rustlers, traders in human beings (the children they captured along the Atlantic edge of Europe), insane warriors who entered battle stark naked."

The Irish and original English (celts and before) were peaceful and very spiritual people before the power elite under the guise of christianity came to 'civilize' us 'barbarians'. The character Jesus or what ever his name was (no letter 'J' before the 16th century) is a figure of humanity and equality that no one except antichrists have a problem with. But to say we rolled over to this foreign power structure who uses religion simply as the system of controlling the masses is a lie.. Never forget it's the oppressors that write history.

What exactly are the glories of Christianity?

Well anyway as you may have noticed.. there's another power elite in town which is why you will hear so much about paedophile priests and see numerous examples of crazy creationalist christians who can't accept dinosaurs on the TV. The purpose of this is to destroy christianity and make way for the religion for the next age (Aquarius) -

The western world is being run by the most sophisticated crime syndicate you can imagine, they own and therefore control virtually everything.
They want a one world government, financial system and religion -

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Pádraig
Member
Username: Pádraig

Post Number: 835
Registered: 09-2004


Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 09:51 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

I Think you missed the point of this piece.

Is ait an mac an saol agus fáilte roimh cheartúcháin.

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Domhnaillín_breac_na_dtruslóg
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Username: Domhnaillín_breac_na_dtruslóg

Post Number: 823
Registered: 04-2008
Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 12:56 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Well, the piece is questionable enough from any point of view. To quote our own Dennis King, "An gnáth-bhlarney leath-stairiúil / leath-shamhlaíoch atá san alt le Cahill, ar ndóigh."

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Seánw
Member
Username: Seánw

Post Number: 524
Registered: 07-2009


Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 02:06 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Wow, Asarlaí, I think you gave a good Alex Jones style post there. I think you went over the cliff with your interpretation, though. I think Cahill, like his book, takes all the historical facts too far to make them seem more disparate than they were. Irish was not the first vernacular language of Europe to be written down, because vernacular Latin was written before then. The Irish were barbaric, but probably not more than any other people of that time, and even the "sophisticated" Roman folk whose barbarism was hide well under nice clothes and fancy titles as we do today. It was barbarism to kill that man "what ever his name was". (Silly statement, I say, because you try to poke holes in historical fact by a fallacy that the letter J didn't exist! Oh how your credibility falls.) All who believe in Christianity should recognize that that religion was a boon to every civilization in came to, even if man who has done evil, does do evil, and will do evil did not bear that standard well.

Glories of Christianity? Well, read Cahill's book because at least one of them is the Irish monks "saving" civilization. Whether you agree or not, you're riding on the backs of those ancestors who almost all prayed to the same God in the same Church. Just mind that before you bite the hand that feeds you.

Last on this for me on this thread, because I can see this train is coming off the tracks!

(Message edited by seánw on March 18, 2010)

I ndiaidh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin.

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Macdara
Member
Username: Macdara

Post Number: 117
Registered: 09-2008
Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 02:24 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Hard to know where to start with Cahill's piffle.

In the first place a barbarian is anyone who doesn't speak Greek.The latter nation thought themselves the epicentre of the world.

Secondly,the Greeks practised human sacrifice,or so Homer tells us.I won't go on, promise!

But..the Wandering Scholars by Helen Waddell is the best book on the Irish monastic tradition.

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(Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 03:00 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

It was something of a throwaway sentence to say that the scribe who wrote "kiss him" about a man must have been a woman. Enough men have kissed each other down through history for it easily to have been a male scribe.



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