How the Irish Saved Civilization, and Writing as Act of Service

How the Irish Saved Civilization is a charming valentine written by Thomas Cahill, a tribute to Ireland's history as a book-loving culture. It starts during the Roman Empire, with its heritage of Greek intellectual life and the birth of Christianity. It moves forward to Christianity's spread across Europe and the arrival of the barbarians during the Dark Ages.

There's are splendid diversions concerning St. Augustine, who Cahill claims is the first author to create a psychological self-portrait, and the Irish epic poem Tain Bo Cuailnge, The Cattle Raid of Cooley. Then we come to St. Patrick, the brave nature lover, and eventually the monastic movement with its book-loving monks.

The heart of the book is that the Irish monasteries saved civilization by copying and preserving the great intellectual manuscripts of ancient Greece and Rome while Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages. Apparently the scribes would add their own little comments into the margins:

One scribe will complain of the backbreaking work of book-copying, another of a sloppy fellow scribe: "It is easy to spot Gabrial's work here" is written in a beautiful hand at the margin of an undistinguished page. A third will grind his teeth about the difficulty of the tortured ancient Greek that he is copying: "There's an end to that -- and seven curses with it!"

I particularly liked the chapter on the Tain, as the ancient Irish epic is called, which features a warrior-queen, Medb, who tries to capture the Brown Bull of Cuailnge so that her husband's fortune won't outrank her own.

Medb is fiery and spirited, and offers Daire mac Fiachna all sorts of treasure for the Brown Bull, "and my own friendly thighs on top of that." Another of the poem's heroes is Cuchulainn, a warrior who marries Emer. On meeting her, he declares, "I see a sweet country. I could rest my weapon there."

(If you've read Angela's Ashes, Cuchulainn is the Irish hero that young Frankie idolizes after his father tells him the story by the fire.)

I might add the Tain to my Irish reading list. The public libraries don't have it, but a few of the university libraries in my area have copies.