St. Patrick at Dromahair

I.

THE following notes lay small claim to original research and none to the dignity of history; but it is hoped that they will be found, as far as they go, accurate. They will embody much that has been learned in many a quiet and pleasant conversation with the old shanahees of the district. They will not be overloaded with quotations or references; but nothing will be advanced for which an authority cannot be produced.

The name of St. Patrick is inseparably connected with Dromahair. He reached it about the year 440, and laboured there for a considerable time. He was well received. The prince of the district was Cairthen. Caichan, a vassal of his, made over “to God and Patrick” his fifth of the territory. This gift Cairthen confirmed, and made it free of all tributes for ever.

Patrick did three things here, for traces of which we must seek: he built a church, he founded a monastery, and he established a nunnery. The search, however, we must admit, will have in it something of the nature of beating up a fox-cover. The three are there sure enough, and there are half a dozen likely spots in which to find them. But which is which—where exactly at least the second and third are—we cannot for the present be certain. Consult in your dilemma any wiseacre of an historian, and he will lay down the law for you quite off-hand; but if you know the locality you will be as wise in the end as at the beginning. “Everybody has a right to his opinion,” is a very absurd statement if you look into it. Many a man’s opinion is not worth a Knockcrockery clay-pipe. Having the advantage, after a dozen years’ sojourn there or thereabouts, of knowing every field and lane about the place as well as the reader knows the rose-beds and gravelled walks of his front flower-garden, we will nowt plunge boldly in and set up our opinion.

The most probable site of the church is at present occupied by the ruined Abbey of Creevelea. It is on the left bank of the Bonet, as Dromahair is on the right, and is within easy view of the street. The river here forms the boundary between two dioceses. Though the town is in the diocese of Kilmore, the abbey is in Ardagh, in the parish of Killenummery. This may not have been always so. There is an obscure old tradition that this parish formerly belonged to Kilmore, but was given to Ardagh in the penal times in order that the Bishop, like every other Irish prelate, might be able to make his way to the sea in greater safety, almost without leaving his own territory. Anyway, Killenummery has this peculiarity, that it is totally separated from the rest of Ardagh: as an Ardagh layman expressed it, an oasis amidst other dioceses. Parts of Cromarty in Scotland used to have the self-same peculiarity. It was not for six hundred years after the time of St. Patrick, at the Synod of Rathbrassil, that Ireland was mapped out into dioceses as we know them now. Hence we need not further discuss their boundaries.

The site indicated is indeed ideal. It was this spot that used to be called by the old people about Dromahair, Carrick Patrick or Patrick’s Rock. The Saint, as was his wont, assisted his three masons, Caeman, Cruineach, and Luireach the Strong, and his artificers in the building of the structure; for Patrick was none of your twentieth-century super-aesthetic young gentlemen who turn up their noses at manual labour, and are equally afraid of soiling their hands and of doing an honest day’s work at anything. This was the church that was intended to be, as we would say now, St. Patrick’s own cathedral, and consequently the principal church of Ireland. As the site was again built upon and rebuilt upon in the succeeding twelve centuries, there is naturally no longer any trace of it, great and imposing as it must have been. The material on the ground was of course made use of for the subsequent structures, just as the walls of O’Rourke’s Castle at the head of Dromahair were employed in the erection of Villier’s Castle beside it. Consequently it is not improbable that many of the quoins and blocks now embedded in the abbey tower and cloisters of Creevelea were either at first hewn out of the quarry by St. Patrick himself, or else were placed in position by his saintly hands.

When St. Patrick set out at last from Dromahair to preach the Gospel elsewhere in Ireland, he left behind him “to watch over the infant Church which at the time he designed to be his own primatial see,” a man whom he had adopted as a boy and who, by his piety and gentle demeanour, had won such favour in his eyes that he had marked him out as his successor. Indeed, on first seeing him he had forthwith prophesied that he should be “the heir of his kingdom.” This was Benen or Benignus. But when the memory of “that radiant land of fairy hills and sunlit waters,” to quote again Archbishop Healy’s words, was fading from the Saint’s memory; when he had made up his mind to stay at Armagh, where he was, and not go back, and when his first coadjutor, old Sen Patrick, died—that is, if he had a first coadjutor at all, which is doubtful—then he summoned to him from Dromahair his beloved son, his “great missionary Bishop” Benen. Benen obeyed the summons simply and humbly as any curate would obey his Bishop, and departed from Dromahair. This date may be fixed with certainty: it was the year 457. From then onward he lived in Ard-Macha, recognized as the Bishop on whom the Apostle’s mantle should fall. But Benen died in 467; St. Patrick lived on till 493.

A writer who is claimed to be an authority, Professor Bury, in his Life of St. Patrick, would have it, however, that Patrick at once appointed Benen his successor on his arrival; and that he himself gave over his labours and retired to Saul to prepare for his end. There he died in 461, and there he was buried. This would make out Benen, who had ruled for twenty years in Dromahair, to have been for ten years the Primate of all Ireland and the actual successor of our National Apostle.

II.

In the “monkish profession” established in Ireland by St. Patrick, states Archdall in his Monasticon Hibernium (we quote from the first edition, Dublin, 1786), “simplicity and purity of manners, and the most rigid mortification, were well calculated to inspire pagans with veneration for such missionaries and their doctrines, and the Irish received, with the rudiments of their faith, a predilection for the monastic state.”

We can readily forgive this learned divine all his irritating expressions about “monks” and “monkery.” His work is a classic on the monasteries of Ireland. It manifests most laborious research, and that on a subject in which as a Protestant he could have had no great interest. He has rescued from obscurity, and from possible total oblivion, a vast deal that redounds to the credit of the country. All honour be his for it. If his pages be a bit tinged by his prejudices, it is a venial fault, and can be discounted.

The monastery founded by St. Patrick at Dromahair must have been of the first importance. The Book of Armagh sets forth in minute detail the manner of succession to the rich glebe with which the generosity of a Leitrim chieftain had endowed it. Even after 457, when Patrick had apparently settled down for good at Armagh, he did not give up all his rights to its possessions. Possibly even then he had not abandoned all hope of returning. The close connexion maintained between Drumlease and Armagh is exemplified in this, that in the code of rules govern ing the former, it is laid down that, if no suitable person were to be found among its monks, then the abbot should be sought for in St. Patrick’s community at Armagh.

Where about Dromahair are we to look for trace of this religious house? There can hardly be a doubt but that it was on the hill between the present Protestant church and the Bonet Bridge. This is Drumlease Hill. To the left of the road, as you face for the Bonet, there is an ancient graveyard now disused. Within it about a century ago was the old Protestant church. This would have stood in about the centre of the monastic enclosure. The position on the crown of the hill above the rich meadows running down on three sides to the circling Bonet is very attractive. Archdall states that “St. Patrick built Drum-lias, near the river Boonid and placed St. Benignus over it.”

Of the church just mentioned some dwarf walls, covered with moss and lichen, still remain. We go further and venture to say that it is quite probable that these walls are the very walls of the oratory or aregal of the establishment founded by St. Patrick, the principal building of the monastic enclosure.

Though very many of these oratories were constructed of wood, still in the case of the greater abbeys—and this was one of the greatest—they were usually built of stone. There would be nothing noteworthy in such an edifice lasting for 1,400 or 1,500 years. On the top of O’Donnell’s Rock, a mountain within four miles of it, is a circular stone caiseal which is most probably twice that age. It is still in a perfect state of preservation, and is occasionally used as a sheep pen. The church’s dimensions are small, as might be expected, seeing that it was intended for the use merely of the abbot and his monks, and perhaps of casual guests. The oratory on Innismurray, outside Sligo Bay, which is still standing, roof and walls, is about the same size. So, too, is St. Columba’s Church at Kells, though built centuries later. It is also still perfect.

For extrinsic evidence, Archdall, writing in 1786, states that this monastery “afterwards became a parish-church.” M’Parlan, indeed, in his Statistical Survey of the County Leitrim, published in 1802, says that “the Protestant church of Dromlias was probably built on the site of it.” But it seems much more likely that the old parish church was continued in use to the end, and that no fresh one was there erected. For while, as Petrie shows, in St. Patrick’s time Irish churches were very numerous but very small, generally about 60 feet by 30, oratories much smaller still, those put up in modern times are comparatively large. The dimensions of the oratory might have well suited its non-Catholic congregation of the seventeenth or eighteenth century about Dromahair. If it were there, they had not the bother of erecting a fresh church. They just “appropriated” it, as their co-religionists certainly did with St. Patrick’s Church, Armagh, St. Mary’s, Limerick, and all the other churches up and down the country that they took a fancy to.

Should this be the case, it is a most interesting fact. You have here the remains of a little church built by our National Apostle; and, further, of a church which possibly, unless in the penal days, was in uninterrupted use for so long a period as 1,300 years.

Except perhaps its little church, of the original monastery there is nothing else. This is not surprising. For it should be borne in mind that, as Archbishop Healy explains, a Celtic monastery of the olden time bore no resemblance whatever to the great medieval establishments whose ruins may be found both in England and Ireland. “In ancient Erin they had no such structures as were built in later ages by the Cistercians, Dominicans, and Franciscans”; and you are not to think of Benen’s house as having been, for instance, like Creevelea Abbey, a half mile to the north-west on the opposite bank of the Bonet, a noble pile of buildings. It was anything but that. His monastery consisted in the main of an oratory, surrounded by rows or streets of small cells, one for every monk; all protected by the rath or caiseal which surrounded it. The cells were of wood or wickerwork. That they were not of stone is almost beyond doubt. Hence we can readily account for its total disappearance. Hence, too, we can see how appropriately was the name Drumlease—i.e., hill (drum) of the sheds (lias)—applied to the hill. The graveyard and the townland in which it is are still called by the same name. Even the whole parish in which Dromahair is situated also takes its designation, Drumlease, from this hill of sheds, this sacred hill.

The significance of its title would indeed be a very strong argument in favour of this eminence being the location of St. Patrick’s foundation, but for one thing. It is possible to explain it somewhat differently.

The saint in his missionary journeys through Ireland was always accompanied by a fairly numerous retinue. This was a necessity of the times. He had his ara or charioteer, his three smiths, his astire or bell-ringer, his scoaire or brewer, and a score of others. Though in passing he was quite ready to accept the hospitality of a friendly chief, at least for himself and his personal attendants, still, when a delay in a place was intended, his household quickly put up for themselves sheds of wood or wattles. From those, here perhaps erected against Patrick’s long stay in Dromahair, the hill may have taken its name. Anyway, when you visit this hill, take off your hat, for your feet are on holy ground.

III.

Of St. Patrick’s convent all memory is lost in the neighbor hood, though there can be no shadow of doubt but that our National Apostle established somewhere in the vicinity of Dromahair a community of nuns. As to the exact position of the convent a high degree of certainty cannot be reached. Tradition gives no assistance. But it was, as Archbishop Healy’s researches testify, a flourishing community. “Caichan gave both his land and his daughter to God.” The youthful maiden, Lassar, a near relative of his, perhaps a niece, received the veil at the Saint’s hands; and she “abode in Druim Dara after Benignus for three score years.” According to the same eminent authority Killarga was both the place she lived in, first under the guidance of Benen, and afterwards under that of his comarbs or successors; and to this parish, as he also states, she has probably given her name.

The existing records accordingly oblige us to hold that the convent was in the parish just mentioned. But where there? There is no place more likely than the ridge above the present little village of Killarga, barely some three or four English miles from Dromahair. The ridge is in a sheltered, very pretty spot, surrounded by a zone of green hills. The Catholic church stands under it. From time immemorial it has been regarded as a sacred place. Near it, in a dell, are the remains of an altar of the penal days, a holy well, and a rude, very ancient stone cross. On the little eminence there is, as on Drumlease Hill, a very old graveyard, and the walls and gables of a Protestant church which was in use a century ago, and possibly stands on the site and embodies the materials of a much older Catholic one. As in the case of Drumlease, too, the whole parish, when centuries after St. Patrick’s time it came to be mapped out, naturally borrowed its name from this spot, the most sacred spot within its boundaries.

As is plain, a great many of St. Patrick’s household were not clerics. Besides his psalmist Benen, who was a cleric, he left behind him, when leaving Dromahair, his two nephews, Nai and Nao, and Dall son of Hencar. There is authority pointing to a permanent settlement of some of his following at “Druim Dara,” i.e., Oakhill, which most probably is an old name for Killarga ridge. If this be so, it is not improbable that their descendants are there still; and that many of the sturdy and upright people of Killarga can claim kinship with our National Apostle.