Irish Spring
The Chthonic Field of Religious Expression
08April2001
The act of desacralizing the natural environment and the "civilizing offensive"
of church and state are at the heart of this story of gall and gael
in Lawrence Taylor's Occasions of Faith. Herein are heroes and villains
in the long march toward a hierarchical and impersonal religious expression, so
very far from the pre-Christian turas of standing stone, sacred spring
and mountain cliff. The most intriguing are the drunken priests who when censured
by the church power structure become foci for the native religious traditions;
consequently enabling them to effect cures, prophecy and curse like the Druids,
or file cum Saints, like Cholm Cille.
One of the major reactions I had to Occasions of Faith and Every Earthly
Blessing, was the recognition that the layers of religious expression are
uncommonly similar to geologic accretions of rock. One does not remove completely
the traces of the past, but merely alter the context or color in the layers above.
"It wasn't just the Pagans who lost their wells…it was also the local saints."(43)
In many ways though these weren't lost, "the landscape is not disenchanted, merely
renamed."(44) That is until the church and state work in tandem to alter the "unruly
character" of the peasantry and bring their 'folk religion' to heel.
Even though the "folk traditions describe a landscape that not only resists disenchantment
but strikes back at those who seek to alter it,"(44) it is the people who inhabit
that landscape which can be altered in the way they view themselves and their
place in that landscape. The reciprocity, which is itself a representation of
the spirit of hospitality - according the landscape the same respect you would
any other neighbor, is one of the most fascinating aspects of this ethnography.
The agency of the landscape is apparent in the negative reciprocity, in that it
is "unlucky to remove or use materials"(74) from it.
In my travels in Alba I cut a wand from an ancient Yew which stands outside Sinclair
castle near Rosslyn chapel in Midlothian. After I had cut the wand, I poured libations
at the quarters on the feet of the tree and gave my watch as a gift. I arrived
on Isle of Skye and was asked, "if I had stolen the branch from the faeries?"
Perhaps my watch was not enough for the faeries, for my glasses were lost shortly
afterwards, in or near Inverness. This is not unlike the reciprocity which afflicted
the priest who choose to take away the ills of those who sought his cures, the
energy of dis-ease could not be destroyed merely absorbed and delayed.
In the same way that the landscape cannot be disenchanted, neither are the attempts
of the "civilizing offensive" able to rid the folk traditions of their active
agents. In the case of the drunken priests not only do we have the continued binary
of gall and gael functioning, but also a further dualism of the
heterodoxy of the church and the continued, albeit modified, expression of religious
traditions organically generated and intimately connected to the landscape. "One
is reminded of the file, the poet whose words have magical efficacy…drunkenness
turns out to be one of the important ways and signs of inspiration/possession
for such poets."(162)
Hospitality and reciprocity are here as well, pointing to religious expression
far older and more cogent than the imported faith, which reshaped it in a vain
attempt at civilizing colonization. For not unlike the file, whom it was
exceedingly dangerous to refuse hospitality to, inciting the poet to destroy the
offender's reputation in verse, which often translated to a physical blemish of
even death, here again we have the priest channeling the same powers. In the refusal
of drink by the young boy who is subsequently blinded, we have the priest acting
out of the moral framework of the Christian tradition, by causing his blindness.
Yet, this action falls explicitly into the older framework of reciprocity and
hospitality. Herein is a certain irony, these acts, the cursing of Fr. MacShane
and the curing of Fr. McGinley, in the eyes of the moralistic hierarchy of the
church are anathema or dangerous at best. Yet, in the mind of the 'folk', they
are seen as "very good"(152), or "Tá an t-athair Mac Fhionnlaoich inna
Shagart an-mhaith."(145)