Confessions of a Pagan Nun

by Kate Horsley

  I saw Sister Aillenn peering out at me from her clochan as I passed, her eyes round and still, and I remembered that she called me bean sidhe. She followed me to my cell, her calmness apparent and unusual. When I turned to look upon her face, she took my hand, which was cold with terror. She whispered, “A sacrifice has been made,” and stared long into my eyes with merry looks, as though she held back laughter. She further said, “My beauty can no longer compel him to succumb to demons.” When I asked that she leave me, she sat on my writing stool and looked through the parchment there. She said, “I will find out who has more power, you or he.” I answered her that I wanted no power but only peace. But she said that I was beloved by the people and good at flinging the truth in a man’s face as a druid does by whispering it onto a blade of grass and throwing it at his enemy. I told Sister Aillenn that I had no enemies and that the druid tricks were only as powerful as the fear they caused. Her madness now seems a melting snow, revealing beneath it a ground full of stones. I am afraid that she has transferred her affliction to me, for as she grows more lucid, I grow more confused by what I am accused of, for I have neither youth nor wealth nor kin nor husband to ward off harm.

  Sister Luirrenn has been kind to me, telling me to stay in my cell and not attend the daily masses, so as to keep out of sight. I am sorry to stay away from the singing of psalms and find that my cell grows smaller when I cannot walk to the woods and on the hills. Twice flowers have been left at my door whose fragrance is fair and welcome to me, the sweet harebell and yellow cowslip. And I saw the second time the monk who does not speak walking from my clo-chan, his straw hat and wild beard fluttering with his hurried steps; his stride is long and his back straight. And because I am succumbing to the chaos of this troubled convent, I believed that this gait belonged to Giannon. I fell to my knees, gasping and weeping to God, “Let it be Giannon come to take me home.” And the sound of his name and of the word home reached so deeply into my flesh that the sobs shook my body. I tried to construct in my mind the face of Giannon beneath the silent monk’s hat and beard, and yet could not even clearly see that face in memory. I could only hear his voice in a certain phrase or glimpse his mouth in a certain configuration. But the whole of his person had been lost to me like a clay pot that has shattered so that one can only hold pieces of its design. And what would it mean if Giannon had come to this place and not made himself known to me? What new pain would be in my bones, to find that he did not remember me or did not care to speak to me? Would it be better to believe that he ignores me or to admit, for the thousandth time, that he was long ago killed in a manner I should not even guess at, taken from my sight forever, no matter how much I longed for him, just as my mother had become a painful silence? It seems better to me to see the corpse and know that the spirit in it is gone, for there is no doubt to those who have touched and looked upon the dead that there is no one there. But hope that someone is still alive or that a beloved’s coldness will end becomes its own corpse, hung around the neck with a stink from which the bearer cannot part. My hope that Giannon had come to coddle me at this most treacherous time was cruel. And what need did I have of Giannon or anyone else to move me from this place? Could I not walk of my own will and on my own tired legs from this place and go again into the wilderness with goats and wits? The thought made my knees and ankles ache with a dread of having no home when I have had this one for five years. I am a wanderer no more. I want only to sit alone in my clochan and read and write, bent over parchments.

  Dear Brigit, who protects and inspires poets, could I not be left alone, a barren woman, to scratch marks on parchment with innocent devotion to wisdom? I pity and then scold myself for being like a child crying for its mother’s breast. There is no one whose life is not hard in this land, no one who is not weary. I feel the weariness of all the people of this land, which sometimes pulls me to my bedding even when the bell rings for psalms. But I also know the joyful spirit of the people of the túaths, who feed fairies and love feasts. And I wonder what the men who love the potency of the bull would say about a man who takes the power from between his legs and discards it as refuse. What is this shame concerning the pleasure-loving bodies God gave us? What is this sin that is original in our flesh? Perhaps shame is the greatest sin, worse than any other. May God forgive me, or not. I now wonder if the people who grow flax and raise pigs and tell stories of the Hound of Culann should cast out the foreign-born who shame themselves and others. We should take their improvements, discarding the rest. On my knees I bow my head, for I am afraid of my blasphemous anger that seems like truth. I see Christ upon the cross, a black sky swirling above his bent head, and I beg him to open his eyes and look at me.

  The wind whips the world outside as though to strike at a beast who will not carry its burden. The wind also brings pieces of the singing of psalms to me. The voice of Sister Aillenn sounds strong today. She is often asked to sing alone, for she mimics the unearthly and harmoniouslullaby of an angel who looks down at Our Lord as he suffers and dies on the tree. I think sometimes of His loneliness and of the way in which all time and all places converge in His suffering and weariness, and I want to weep for Him and the world. It is in Jesus’ human form that I recognize a hero. He did not hide himself from suffering and doubt. He was fully human. That he rose from the dead is a trick to seduce people who need such tricks. The whole universe, from the darkening sky that reveals the constellations to the light that exists in a beetle’s eye, is already trick enough if we are not afraid to contemplate our own smallness in the infinite mystery. But sometimes we are simply hungry and lonely. That Christ fed fish and bread to the poor and spoke to the outcast whore makes me want his company on this dark night. The world is full of immortals but sorely lacking in kindness.

  Sister Luirrenn brought food to me in the afternoon and prayed with me. She has told me that the silent monk tends my garden in my place. It is hard punishment to have the work among the herbs and flowers taken away. This night and for the days that follow until I am let again into the company of the sisters, I will continue my story, for now I am at that place where I must tell how I came to the convent of Saint Brigit. And also I will transcribe the codices of scripture, for well I know my duties here, which I have always loved. And when I have finished and said farewell to my sisters, leaving my tears on the backs of their hands, I will go on and make a hut for myself in a túath where charity to an old woman is a virtue. For though I look only to be at the end of my youth, I feel instead at the beginning of my old age.

  1. Teách Duinn: an island southwest of Ireland where the dead are said to gather.

  2. Fidchell: a game like chess.

  3. Geìlt: one who goes mad and flees from battle.

  4. Ban-druí: female druid.

  5. Screpull: silver coin.

  6. Dal: land where a tribe exists.

  7. Bas-chrann: small wooden log used as a knocker.

  8. Bàdhum: place where cows are kept.

  9. Dabhach: two-handled tub.

  10. Baile Shuibhe: frenzy of Sweeny, who went in search of peace of mind by developing an animal familiarity with nature.

  11. “Outside are dogs and sorcerers and whores and murderers.”

  [ 11 ]

  WHEN I WALKED NORTHWARD, I came along a well-traveled road on which there was a hostel with common room and sleeping corners. The innkeep sold ale there and claimed it was the ale of Brigit miraculously transformed from water. There is no better saint for this land than one who turns water to ale. But I said that I had known Brigit as a god, and the people in that place scorned my ignorance and said that she was a saint now, having been converted by Patrick himself. Some said she was the mother of the hero Jesus. Others said that she was God’s wife, or even his female manifestation. Others said she was just a woman who had been raised by a druid and saved from perdition by our first bishop. They told me that this Patrick had done battle with druids and smashed their skulls as though they were birds’ eggs. I heard in these stories
an old devotion to might and ale and did not feel unfamiliar with the themes though they had new names attached to them. Some told me that when Patrick died, a twelve-day wake was held; all the túaths and cultivated lands were filled with the sound of bells and lit by funeral torches. My mother had told me nothing of this, but it is said to be true. The innkeep told me too that a druid had poisoned Patrick’s ale, which was made by the saint’s own brewer. Here is another aspect of a true saint, a man with his own brewer. I had no hostility toward Patrick, nor do I now, though his Latin is not well formed.

  I stayed for over a year at the hostel, partaking of large quantities of the holy ale, which was good. And I thought often that this new religion was not an uncomfortable one. I put aside my sorrow over the Pelagian who had been drowned and my suspicion that Christians had dragged Giannon into the long night of absence. I became a congenial soul among the people who came to the hostel on their way from one market to another or on their way home with their herds. The innkeep used my talents to encourage others to drink his beer. I told stories and wrote legal agreements between men concerning a cumal1 or a marriage arrangement. I saw coins exchanged there in regular and copious amounts and remembered the silver I had been given at the Fair of Tailltenn years before. I was suspicious of a thing that could not be used directly but was a symbol for useful things, so I preferred payment in meat and ale. Sometimes I grew too loud, and more than once I found myself in the pigpen, being doused with water by the innkeep, who was like a brother to me. He might have put me on the road had I not sat beside his wife when she had a killing fever and stroked her hand. I listened to her fears and told her that her eyes were beautiful, like the eyes of Queen Mebd, and then she closed those same eyes and stopped living as herself.

  On a night when I had fallen down beside the trough, my face and hair in wet dirt, a new voice called my name. I looked up to see Mongan, the monk who had come with Giannon that night long, long ago and whom I had seen at the Fair of Tailltenn in the year of the silver coin. The man’s face had grown soft furrows, and he had developed a limp, caused, he said, when he fell one night and the wheel of an ox cart rolled over his leg. I was glad to see him, but he feared for my condition, which was not good or noble. I explained my life with goats and other beasts, refraining from telling the account with the bear, which I had told before and which had become a satire. He understood that I was in some kind of despair, though I myself did not acknowledge it. For a fortnight, the monk Mongan stayed with me and kept the ballcin2 from my hand. I was then stricken with a terrible shaking and a sickness of worms, and I said Gonomil, organmil, morbumil.3 Mongan told me to leave off these kinds of chants, which were dangerous and evil. He comforted me with the story of Saint Brigit. His wordsmade her form before my eyes as a true sister, for she was raised as a druid and hated suffering. She fed the sick and soon came to know God and Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave her the power to perform miracles. She could see into a person’s soul, and she saw into mine and brought from it the sorrow and rage I felt and turned it into a great weariness that still sometimes sits upon me. Mongan stayed with me through the night when Brigit, whose hair was a dark cloak like my mother’s, brought the sorrow and rage out of me. And then I was cured, and there was a peace about me that I had never known. Still, I wanted to know the purpose of my suffering and of the agonies humans endured. Mongan told me that there was another place of solace that one went to after this life. And I am still suspicious of such words that are like coins, representing something useful but not useful in themselves.

  I came out of my sickness and asked for parchment, for I wanted to write down the story of Brigit in gratitude for how she had come to me. Mongan told me then that I should go to the convent where Brigit, though she be dead, still came to tend her own sacred flame as a sister to the nuns who guarded that same flame. This vision shone like a brilliant jewel to me. I wanted nothing more than to speak to one who had died and might know the true purpose of our hard lives. And Mongan reminded me of the unlimited stacks of parchment and the tomes, which I could read and transcribe. I said to him, for I wanted always to tell the truth, “What else can I do but be a cele dé? What else but drown in ale and immortalize laws that concern the ownership of pigs and spoons?” For I was neither wife nor druid. I had no husband, no child, and no knowledge of where the powerful aes dána had hidden themselves. I remembered, too, that Giannon himself had told me that the most complete store of knowledge, which included histories from far-away lands and times, was in the convents and monasteries.

  I thought many days and nights about the hero Jesus and prayed with Mongan to understand Him. I saw one night the eyes of Our Lord as they had looked when He was bolted to the tree. His eyes were weary but made of compassion. I smelled His sweat and tasted the blood that fell down His face from the thorns. And He smiled at me, as though we shared an understanding that time passed and that one legend took the place of another as one chieftain dies and another slips onto his seat of power and marries the land. I asked the monk Mongan about the social position of nuns, and he told me that they were like poets, coming after guests but before musicians at a banquet. He said that some nuns were young, some old, and that some were women who were wives to other women. He told me that there were women who were elders and acted as mothers to the other women. I told Mongan that I would become one of God’s devoted at Brigit’s church. I combed my hair and brushed my cloak and traveled on the road to Kildare with a scroll signed and sealed by Mongan attesting to my pure intentions.

  I was then living in weariness and well ready to find a home and useful vocation. My mind was like an empty cup. I let no thoughts of my old life pour into it. When I came to Kildare, I saw there a long building on the hill, surrounded by small hives made of stone that are the clochans we live in. At the bottom of the hill were the houses of the laypeople. I passed these by and came to the chapel, which had no human in it. Inside I saw the flame and heard my own breath and my own heartbeat in that large structure that was like a rich chieftain’s hall. Then Sister Luirrenn found me. I fell onto the floor before her and asked to come among the sisters. She asked if I were baptized, and I said yes, which was a lie that I have not repented.

  I do not want to be a liar to Sister Luirrenn, who has been so good to me. It was she to whom I showed the scroll written by Mongan and my own scrolls as well. She welcomed and blessed me. I sang loudly and ran in the garden and around each clochan, feeling blessed freedom from the uncertainty of where I would go and what I would do. I was in ecstasy to think that I had come to a place, and been let into it, where a human who had died could tell me what death is and therefore what life is. I wanted to stay by Brigit’s flame, to do nothing but wait for her and hear her tell me all that I needed to know. And I promised her in my thoughts that I would tell others only what she allowed me to tell them, and that if she did allow such a messenger, I would endure briar patches and roads turned to lakes to alleviate the ignorance of any humans I could reach. The scrolls and tablets and codices that I saw before me intoxicated me more thoroughly than all the innkeep’s ale. I envisioned a profound blessing of understanding disease, pain, old age, and death, a blessing every human hungers for no matter how much meat is on his platter. I wondered that I could use my druid skills to write these truths on parchment. And I also knew, without planning it, that I would make immortal with all the parchment and ink available to me those whom I loved and was never to see again. I have wanted to write the truth, but I still do not have the wisdom for the task.

  I have not yet seen Brigit or heard her voice. But I have had ideas come into my mind that seem like wisdom. For one, I agree with the Pelagians, though I be found out and my head held under the water of some brown lake for heresy; all that God has made is sacred, but in ways that the human cannot understand with thoughts but must know in the moment between breaths. Such a notion has blossomed from the seed sown when I went to the woods with my mother. Mongan asked me once if I had not considered that to
the Pelagians worms are sacred since they are created by God. And I said then that perhaps in suffering worms we are made to be more grateful for pleasure. I know that to be human is to suffer. But even suffering can be sacred if it compels one to give and receive kindness and to despise harmful acts.

  I have learned many things since I came to Brigit’s chapel and read the letters and scriptures of the saints. I will give here the sum of the facts I have seen concerning the transformation in this land since Christians have come here, in case they not be recorded by any other hand:

  1st, improvements in tools and methods used for husbandry

  2nd, increase in varieties and hardiness of plants and domestic animals

  3rd, decrease in violence between túaths and in the taking of hostages

  4th, increase in literacy and knowledge of the world

  5th, increase in the distance between the rich and the poor, the latter increasing in numbers while the former increase in wealth

  6th, decrease in the influence and freedom of women, whose councils exist no longer and whose property has been diminished

  7th, increase in cruelty to the land and disregard for its power and beauty

  I see the improvements the Christians have brought, but these improvements and payments in gold have seduced the chieftains away from powers older and more elemental than scripture. The chieftains themselves relied too much on druids for their knowledge and did not make themselves wise enough. Surely a wise leader would see the benefits of marrying old wisdom to new devices, of scorning intolerance and dogma while embracing the new heroes and rituals, which have such pretty sounds and good influence. I would live in a world full of Christ-like humans, but not one full of Christians, may God forgive me. This I can now say as I prepare to leave this place, having reached the truth of my own limitations as a follower of the Christian doctrine, which the abbot has shown to be fertile ground for harmful shame and fear.