It is leading up to Christmas in a difficult year and so I wanted to write a little bit about fear and darkness and the path back to the light as well as the hope that things can be fixed and that life can and will get better. So, I thought about stories I know that reflect that and one which I am very fond of sprang to mind. It involves some of my favourite things (ghosts and chatting) and is a strange but uplifting little medieval Irish story of the undead, unselfishness and the power of hope and kindness. I hope this speaks to you as it has often done to me.

When the abbot met the ghost 

The Irish annals are an important historical source for medieval Ireland. A record of wars, deaths, marriages and major events in Ireland over many hundreds of years. Much of the material included in them is what you might expect – deaths, raids, the rise and fall of kings etc etc -  but some of it deals with events that are somewhat stranger…

In the year 899 according to the Annals of the Four Masters, Cairpre, a renowned saint and abbot died. Standard stuff really until you read the entry in full.

“Cairpre Cromm, Bishop of Cluain Mic Nois, died; it was to him the spirit of Maelseachlainn shewed itself”.

Thus, we learn that the dead holy man was famous for having seen a ghost.

Cairpre Cromm (meaning Cairpre the bent or bowed) was abbot of Clonmacnoise (Cluain Mic Nois) in the late ninth century. The abbacy of Clonmacnoise was a position of immense prestige in medieval Ireland. The abbey was founded in the sixth century and was a centre of religion, learning and trade. You can get an idea of how important and subtstantial the place was by the fact that its ruins contain nine churches, a castle, two round towers and a large number of carved stone crosses and cross-slabs. A large, bustling and prosperous monastic community and attendant services, really a proto town whose abbot was a powerful man.                                                     

Cairpre was therefore someone who would have been highly respected (and feared not a little) by his contemporaries. A hard working, scholarly abbot to whom, one night, the ghost of a man, a former king of Ireland named Mael Ṡechnaill (full name - Mael Ṡechnaill mac Mael Ruanaid) appeared. Mael Ṡechnaill was King of Ireland from 846–862 and, as you can imagine at that period (Vikings remember) lived a life of much violence and likely excessive sinning. 

His obituary in the Annals of Ulster is a lesson in compressed and impressive genealogy:

“Mael Sechnaill son of Mael Ruanaid son of Donnchad son of Domnall son of Murchad of Mide son of Diarmait the Harsh son of Airmedach the One-eyed son of Conall of the Sweet Voice, son of Suibne son of Colmán the great son of Diarmait the red son of Fergus Wrymouth, king of all Ireland, died on the third feria, the second of the Kalends of December 30 Nov., in the 16th year of his reign”.

The story of the encounter between the abbot and the dead king is actually told in a Middle Irish text Scel Coirpre Chruim ˥ Moel Sechnaill meic Moel Ruanaid. The story itself reflects medieval anxieties around hell and purgatory as will become evident when we learn what the ghost wanted.

Anyway, when this once-powerful king came back as a ghost he manifested behind the abbot very suddenly (can you IMAGINE?) and looked distorted and blackened. These were physical signifiers of his excessive sins. His sins were literally darkening his ghostly appearance.  

He was further marked by a bright circle around his neck while he was wearing a peculiar garment which seemed to be a one sleeved shirt. When the saint asked about his appearance the king explained that the line around his neck was due to the fact that he had given a neck ring to a priest who had promised to pray for him but then didn’t. The priest was also dead and was actually in hell which was, I suppose, of some small comfort. The king’s odd shirt was due to the fact that once he was asked to donate a cloak to a poor child and he contemptuously gave them a similar piece of clothing. A bad-tempered gift which he was made to remember in the afterlife.

The king was acutely aware that his actions had led him to his present, sad pass (the medieval audience for this would have loved to know that the afterlife could be deeply unpleasant for sinners especially arrogant, rich ones). There was bewailing of sins and lots of regret on his part.

‘Sad is that, O Son of my living God, that I did no good while I was in the body.’ 

Of course, all of this chat was interesting but really, asked the busy abbot what could he do for the distressed king?  Medieval ghosts tended to appear in order to request prayers to get them out of purgatory/hell and this king was no different and duly made his request.

Saint Cairpre was sympathetic but still somewhat confused as to why the king chose him in particular to help?  The tormented king explained that demons had been dragging him through the air when they heard Cairpre praising God and in abject terror they dropped their victim.

This is a picture of the devil carrying Jesus who seems pretty relaxed if a bit alarmed about it all. Anyway, it gives you an idea of devils and the like dragging people around by land or air (Beinecke, MS 425, fol. 48r, and you can see the missal it came from online here)

So, the king seized on this bit of good luck to ask this holy man in a holy place to help him. The king (in an indication of what sort of man he had been) then promised the saint treasure if he prayed for him but then ruined it by boasting that he had taken it from Vikings and then killed a young lad who was the only other person who knew of it. The saint was horrified and declined the offer but said he would pray for him anyway and his priests would pray for the bad priest (the one who was mentioned earlier and who was roasting in hell).

The results were quick:

Six months later the king visited the king again and seemed much physically better (he was described as speckled, the darkness of his sins was disappearing). He explained that the power of Cairpre and his men was prevailing thanks to prayers. A year after he had first spoken to the saint the king visited again – this time cleansed fully of his sins thanks to prayer and he went off to Heaven along with the (once bad – now saved) priest.

Cue much praising of God and comfort to those who encountered the story.

It’s a weirdly low-key, moral tale and also one that showcases the power of prayer (and of holy men). The need for us to live moral lives and the benefits that brings is often brought into sharp relief at times when we slow down a little to reflect, like at Christmas when such tall tales of redemption are always welcomed. Indeed, the ideas within this old Irish story were perfected a thousand years later by Charles Dickens in a story which still speaks to so many today.

Restless ghosts, filled with regret at wicked choices, who seek and achieve redemption remind us  that change can be achieved and goodness can triumph over the forces of darkness, no matter how far down the path we go. The suffering ghost of the king and his bad priest were plucked from the grasp of the devil and his demons themselves thanks to unselfish help from others. What we learn from our tale is that their sins had merely stained how they appeared but not who they were, and thus, they could be saved.

Finally, for this Christmas season 2021 I wish you one thing. That if you happen to be visited by the restless dead this year, let them be non-malevolent Irish ones who simply want a few prayers and a chat to achieve redemption.

Some reading

Santiago Barreiro and Luciana Cordo Russo (eds) Shapeshifters in Medieval North Atlantic Literature (Amsterdam, 2019)

 

Carey (John): “The story of Cairpre Cromm and Mael Ṡechnaill son of Mael Ruanaid” in The end and beyond: medieval Irish eschatology, edited by Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, Emma Nic Cárthaigh and John Carey, with a foreword by Bernard McGinn (Aberystwyth, 2014), pp. 465–473.

‘Three Legends from the Brussels Manuscript 5100-4’, ed. Whitley Stokes, Revue Celtique 26 (1905) 360-77.