Celtic Corner - February 2013

CELTIC CORNER:

St.Patrick’s Day is just ahead of us, so who is St.Patrick and what is all the hype about?

St.Patrick’s Day (La Fheile Padraig) is first a religious holiday celebrated on March 17^th. He is also the most commonly recognized saint in Ireland. This day is also celebrated all over the world.

Historians say Patrick was born in Roman Britain in the 4^th century into a wealthy Romano British Family. Patrick’s father & grandfather were Deacons in the church. Patrick was kidnapped at the age of 16 by Irish Raiders. He was held captive in Northern Ireland as a slave. Pat escaped fleeing to the coast, boarding a ship, he returned to Britain. Patrick felt that God wanted him to return to Ireland, so he studied to be a priest then became a bishop and in the year 432 he returned to Ireland. His mission was to Christianize the Irish from their native Polytheism. Patrick used many props in his teaching methods such as; to explain the Christian doctrine of the Trinity he used the shamrock. After 40 years of teaching, he died on March 17^th in the year 470. There were many other missions from Rome to Ireland but Patrick endured as the principle champion of Irish Christianity.

Shortly before his death in Ireland in about 461 A.D. Patrick climbed to the peak of one of Ireland’s highest mountains from where he blessed all the people of the country. Today he is Ireland’s patron saint, and the mountain he climbed (Croaghpatrick) is named after him. Saint Patrick was buried in Downpatrick, which was a great European shrine until its destruction by the English government in 1539.

 St.Patrick created this great faith in the Irish people. I would guess God gave him insight into the struggles that this great Celtic Nation would have to endure. The Irish always managing to keep their faith, were persecuted, jailed, hung, starved, kicked off their land and out of their country. So goes the old Irish Saying “Keep the Faith”. Whether it was the Irish that stayed in their own Ireland or were forced to Immigrate to other countries, they were united & proud. The Irish first marched in Boston on March 18, 1737. This was the first Irish Parade in the world. New York’s Parade was March 17, 1762, Ireland’s first parade was 1931 in Dublin, and New Jersey’s first parade was 1936 in Newark. So why did we march? We did it not just for the religious aspect of the day or the fun of the day, but we also marched in remembrance of the tough days. The many Bloody Sundays gone by and the injustices still taking place in Ireland & the rest of the world today. In the early days, unity got us jobs, acceptance, Political & Labor positions and don’t forget the Irish were decorated with more U.S. Medals of honor than any other country in the world. In recent years our proud tradition of marching lost a little spark. .In these days of our diverse nation, let us show that this Celtic Nation is alive & well in Woodbridge. Let’s get back to the old tradition, March behind our Grand Marshall, Ed Mullen, Irishman of the year, Frank Darcy & Irish woman of the year, Claire Miloscia,

Correspondence Secretary                                                                                     Frank Darcy

 

Celtic Corner - January 2013

CELTIC CORNER:

    While other European Celts are subject to the governments of Britain and France, the Celts of the Republic of Ireland (officially Eire in Gaelic) constitute an independent state-the only truly free Celts left in Europe. In an eight-hundred year history of bitter rebellion and savage repression, the English have been less than successful in their attempt to subjugate Ireland. However, up to now the “Emerald Isle” is not yet entirely free of foreign rule. In Northern Ireland, the descendants of the English planted Protestant settlers still formed a politico-religious majority which, as originally planned by the English, continued to favor being ruled by London. From 1969 fighting between the Catholics who favor unification with the Republic of Ireland, and the Protestants, supported by armed British soldiers, has killed over three thousand people.

          In the Republic of Ireland, by contrast, Protestants and Catholics have lived harmoniously together since independence was achieved from the British in 1922. The south’s majority Catholics have been as friendly and religiously tolerant as any people in the world. Since independence, popular elections in the Republic of Ireland produced a Protestant president of Ireland, a Jewish mayor of Dublin, and a Catholic female president married to a Protestant. The English were permitted to continue enjoying the life of landed gentry in Ireland.

          The Celts have always been known as fierce in battle but gentle in friendship. Classical writers said of the Celts that they provided hospitality and food to strangers before inquiring who they were. Centuries later, in Ireland’s 1742 A.D. Dublin (a city then larger than Hamburg or Berlin), the German composer Handel gave the world’s first public performance of what would become his most famous and beloved work, his Messiah. Contrary to what he had been let to believe in London, Handel found the Irish generous and polite.

          A stranger in Ireland today is still assured of “Cead mile Failte” (a hundred thousand welcomes). Internationally, the Irish people were recently voted the most friendly to foreigners of all the people of the European Community-as polled by the European Commission and published in the French newspaper, Liberation. In its 1991 annual report, the United Nations Development Program ranked the world’s nations in various categories of human development. These included the findings that the Republic of Ireland and Japan have the lowest murder and rape rates among all industrial nations. Dubliners were the happiest of city residents as indicated by a UNESCO survey, published in 1995, of fifteen European cities, which found that only seven percent of Dubliners would be happy about living somewhere else. Close behind in the survey were Barcelona and Copenhagen.

 

The Durable Celts

For centuries the Celts have known their share of war and famine, yet they are still around. Their passion for personal freedom is at the very core of their nature. This respect for individuality may not have served them well in fighting Rome’s single-minded legions, but it represented an early consciousness of human rights that has only recently become fashionable in democratic nations of the modern world.

Like the warmth of the sun
And the light of the day,
May the luck of the Irish
shine bright on your way

 

Correspondence Secretary                                                                 President

Frank Darcy                                                                                        Ken Egan

 

Celtic Corner - December 2012

CELTIC CORNER:

In Ireland, late fall is the time of the year to make the house ready for the upcoming holiday celebrations. An Irish home is cleaned top to bottom and special holiday linens would be brought out of storage. Olden days in Ireland would see the home being white washed and general repairs to the home. Once all is clean it is ready for festive Christmas decorating.

Irish Celtic Traditions

No Irish home would be complete without the holly. Holly with its glossy green leaves and festive red berries are perfect for the holiday decorating. At Christmas in Ireland, holly was used to decorate the entire house. A spray was placed over the door as well as on the mantle, around picture frames, among the plates on the cupboard, as candle rings and in other areas of the home. Gifts of holly boughs were also given to neighbors. One charming folklore superstition was that the fairy folk would come in out of the cold to find shelter in the holly branches.The Mistletoe dates back to the ancient druid priests who used it for many purposes. In later years, it was used by the Irish Celts in the tradition of kissing a woman under the mistletoe.

Irish Food

The Christmas cooking would start early with the making of the plum pudding, breads and spiced beef. A traditional Irish Christmas meal might consist of roasted goose, potatoes, cranberry sauce, vegetable, sausages and puddings. Spiced beef is often eaten sliced cold with fresh bread in the days after the main feast.

Irish Hospitality

Hospitality is abundant in Ireland and it is reflected in many holiday customs. A lighted candle would be placed in the window as a welcome beacon for both traveler and wandering priest. The candle is placed in the window on Christmas Eve to signify the welcome to the Holy Family looking for shelter. Anther aspect of Irish hospitality is seen after the Christmas meal. The doors are left unlocked and the table is set with bread and milk for travelers who might come in the night after seeing the welcome of the lighted candle in the window.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

The twelve days of Christmas are celebrated between the birth of Christ, December 25 and the Epiphany (coming of the Magi) January 6. A small gift would be given on each day during this time. The twelve days of Christmas included many festivities including parties and the visiting of friends, family and neighbors. Twelfth night would be the end of the celebrations and the day that holiday decorations were taken down.

An Irish Christmas Blessing

The light of the Christmas star to you

The warmth of home and hearth to you

The cheer and good will of friends to you

The hope of a childlike heart to you

The joy of a thousand angels to you

The love of the Son and God’s peace to you

Nollaig Shona

Happy Christmas

Correspondence Secretary                                              President

Frank Darcy                                                                    Ken Egan

Celtic Corner - October 2012

Aisle of Saints and Scholars

Only in Ireland, never reached by the Roman legions, would the Celtic culture remain intact through the centuries-long after the Roman Empire had decayed and fallen to the Germans.

The first phase of Celtic art began from about 700 B.C. with the Hallstatt period dating from a place of the same name in Austria. Its finest expression dates from about 500 B.C. with the beginning of the fantastic art of LaTene period, named after an archaeologically rich site discovered in Switzerland. It continued in continental Europe and in Celtic Britain, but declined with the advent of Roman conquest in the first century B.C. Today hundreds of objects in museums all over Europe attest to a brilliant and unique art that lasted for centuries, a legacy proudly shared by every country in which the ancient Celts lived.

Again only in Ireland would the centuries old traditions of Celtic art remain intact and survive the fall of the Roman Empire itself. Indeed the creative urge of the Celtic spirit would expand beyond the boundaries of three dimensional art to nourish the writing of seventh and eight century A.D. illuminated(elaborately decorated) manuscripts from Irish monasteries. What such Celtic scholars produced in illuminated manuscripts has never since been surpassed in world art.

Some precious and famous art objects of the ancient Irish Celts survive, such as the exquisite eighth century Tara Brooch, the priceless ninth century illuminated Book of Kells, and the noble, tenth century Irish high crosses sculptured in stone.

While early Christian missionaries from Rome encountered only rudimentary elements of law and learning among the Germanic peoples in the fifth century A.D, they found that Irish society included organized schools which had for centuries produced learned and respected specialists in religion, calendrical skills, law, genealogy, poetry and oral literature. When Ireland replaced paganism with Christianity, the Celtic high regard for knowledge and learning not only remained, but flourished more than ever with the added dimension of writing.

With the adoption of Christianity, ancient Celtic Ireland emerged from its Age of Heroes and entered its Age of Saints, becoming known to the rest of Europe as the Island of Saints.(At that time a holy man could be given the title of “Saint” without in fact being a saint canonized by Rome.)

From the sixth century the Irish became internationally known for their devotion to learning and scholarly activities and for actively spreading their knowledge and civilization abroad. The Celts, despite an alleged fondness for war, had been fascinated with organized learning and knowledge for centuries. That was what their druids and bards were all about. The early Christian monasteries in Ireland were the natural successors to the druid and bardic schools.

From the sixth to the ninth centuries A.D., Irish native excellence, representing the “purest” Celtic culture remaining in Europe, burst forth unrestrained in the literary and creative civilization. This included Ireland’s Golden Age of Saints and Scholars, an extraordinary period which spread learning and Christianity throughout much of Europe like a guiding light in the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. During these centuries, Ireland’s monasteries are considered to have been the most brilliant centers of learning in all Europe.

It was said of these ancient Celts:

Their Wealth was not judged by what they had

but what they gave

 

May the good saints protect you
and bless you today

 

Your Correspondence Secretary                                      President

Frank Darcy                                                                    Ken Egan

Celtic Corner - September 2012

The Celtic Church & The Church of Rome

Tara was the seat of the Kings of Ireland and located on the east coast. Therefore, the location made raids on the west coast of Great Britain an easy target and the probable area of St. Patrick’s kidnapping.

King Daithi held the seat in Tara about 407 A.D. Daithi was a great warrior. He marched into Scotland and defeated the King of the Picts (or Scotts). He marched all through England and at some point probably captured young Patrick.

In AD 431, Pope Celestine sent Bishop Palladius, a Roman, to Waterford/Wexford. This area was already occupied by some Christians.

The Pope feared that the Irish may be influenced by a British missionary named Pelagius. This missionary was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. Pelagius taught the soul had free choice and free will, not predestination. Today predestination is not a church precept.

In 432, Pope Celestine sent Patrick back to Ireland, no longer a captive, but a bishop. From the beginning and for another 200 years, the Irish Church had an individual Celtic flavor, rather than a universal Roman Order. St Patrick was a robust, energetic man about 45, roughly dressed, not adorned in long robes. He experienced Brehon law rather than Roman law.

There were many factors that missionaries Palladius and Patrick encountered that made their objective difficult, such as Pelagianism, traces of the Arian heresy, Paganism & sun worship.

The next pope, Sixtus III, fearing that Patrick was too close to the Celtic tradition, summoned him to Rome. Patrick continued to ignore the order and the matter was quietly dropped by Rome.

The Papal desire to Romanize the Celtic church would continue indefinitely, culminating 700 years later, AD 1155, with the laudabiliter and the Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169. Like the military and political situation, it can be seen then, that the evangelization of Ireland was never a smooth, easy transition, but riven with dispute, rancor and even Papal intrigue.

The Sea of Rome was continuously wary of the Celtic church and wanted it to conform to the universal order. The widespread gains of Celtic missionaries in Scotland and half of England alarmed the pro-Augustine, Orthodox Roman church. In AD664, the Irish bishop, St Colman, was ordered to attend a meeting at Whitby in Yorkshire, where he was compelled to accept Roman church customs in liturgy, feast-dates, texts, dress and tonsure etc.

During the six centuries of the barbarian Dark Ages, following the fall of the Roman Empire, Ireland became a beacon of the Christian church in Europe, the golden age of culture, art and scholarship. A leading figure of this pre-Renaissance enlightenment was Johannes Scotus or John Scot, the Irish philosopher from the Co. Down area of today(AD800-77); not to be confused with the anti-Aquinas namesake of the 13^th century(“Scotus” can also mean “Dark”).

This 9^th Century scholar supported the pro-Pelagian and anti-Augustinian line on free will etc., at the court of King Charles in Paris, as resident philosopher. He reasoned also, that Hell was not an eternal punishment, since sin and therefore its punishment, was finite.

Therefore, the Devil himself would eventually be saved, leaving good and Heaven as the only entity. Pope Honarius III ordered Scotus’s great work DeNatura to be burned. But some copies have survived. He himself was protected by the King.

His image was used on the Irish five-punt note in recent time. It would seem that while correctly advocating free will and choice, he erred in assuming that Satan would choose to repent and be saved. Out of Hell there is no redemption, because the wicked hate God. God, in allowing choice and free will, does not then condemn the wicked; rather the wicked freely choose to be separate, forever, from God, thus Hell; evil is their eternal delight, the terrible paradox of free will and choice.

Henry II of England coveted Ireland and called the Council of Winchester in 1155 for this purpose, knowing the Pope’s desire to “civilize” Ireland and regulate church practice there. Henry then sent an envoy to Pope Adrian IV, an Englishman (Nicholas Brakespear), a son of a priest (no clerical marriage ban then). In 1156 the Pope granted Henry the papal bull laudabiliter, permission to invade Ireland.

Ironically then it was Roman Catholicism which initiated the conquest of Ireland, albeit via an English Pope and an English Norman king.

The High King of Ireland, Roderick O’Connor, was not even consulted and he was powerless to resist because the Pope compelled the bishops, clergy and people to accept English rule, under pain of excommunication, damnation or papal interdict.

Henry’s barons however, feared the sea route and no invasion occurred until 1169 after Dermot McMurrough’s appeal to Henry for help in 1166. Pope Alexander III enforced the edict in 1171 by ordering the bishops to meet at Cashel and accept Roman and Norman rule.

So Henry had a bloodless conquest of Ireland and was welcomed here by the bishops and military leaders alike. The people had no say in the matter. So, 740 years after Patrick came to a Celtic church, it was the Roman church and Catholicism which, paradoxically, conquered Ireland.

This became Protestant rule 400 years later when King Henry VIII converted. Patrick is the real conqueror however, when on March 17 we of all denominations joyously celebrate a British/Roman/Celtic church saint in a uniquely Irish Way!

 

 

May the love and protection

Saint Patrick can give

Be yours in abundance

As long as you live.

 

Your Correspondence Secretary                                      President

Frank Darcy                                                                    Ken Egan

Celtic Corner - June 2012

This is a great Irish song honoring all Fathers who have passed away. But it is also a reminder to love and enjoy your father while he is still living.

THE OLD MAN

The tears have all been shed now

We've said our last goodbyes

His souls been blessed

He's laid to rest

And it's now I feel alone

He was more than just a father

A teacher my best friend

He can still be heard

In the tunes we shared

When we play them on our own

Chorus:

I never will forget him

For he made me "what I am"

Though he may be gone

Memories linger on

And I miss him, the old man

As a boy he'd take me walking

By mountain field and stream

And he showed me things

not known to kings

And secret between him and me

Like the colors of the pheasant

As he rises in the dawn

And how to fish and make a wish

Beside the Holly Tree

Chorus

I thought he'd live forever

He seemed so big and strong

But the minutes fly

And the years roll by

For a father and a son

And suddenly when it happened

There was so much left unsaid

No second chance

To tell him thanks

For everything he's done

"Lá na n-Aithreacha Sona"(Happy Fathers Day)

Your Corres Secretary

        Frank Darcy

Celtic Corner - May 2012

Instead of Irish History, I thought this would be more appropriate in honor of Mother’s Day.

I am sure all of you know this tune. Have your handkerchiefs out when you read it.

 

An Irish boy was leaving

Leaving his native home

Crossing the broad Atlantic

Once more he wished to roam

And as he was leaving his mother

While standing on the Quay

He threw his arms around her waist

And this to her did say.

 

"A mother's love is a blessing

No matter where you roam

Keep her while she's living

You'll miss her when she's gone

Love her as in childhood

When feeble, old, and grey

For you'll never miss a mother's love

'Til she's buried beneath the clay"

 

And as the years grow onward

I'll settle down in life

And I'll choose a nice young colleen

And take her for my wife

And as the kids grow older

They'll play around my knee

And I'll teach them the very same lesson                       

That my mother taught to me

 

"A mother's love is a blessing

No matter where you roam

Keep her while she's living

You'll miss her when she's gone

Love her as in childhood

When feeble, old, and grey

For you'll never miss a mother's love

'Til she's buried beneath the clay"

 

Happy Mother's Day! (Lá an Mháthair faoi shona dhuit!)
Your Correspondence Secretary

        Frank Darcy