Confessions of a Pagan Nun

by Kate Horsley

  Whoever reads these accounts must think that I suffered from the sin of sloth and wanted nothing more from my vocation than an exemption from hardship. But consider that to become a druid one must be schooled for at least nine years while learning the two hundred and fifty primary stories and the one hundred secondary stories. There are still druidic schools in existence, though they are severely challenged by the Christian priests. God forgive me, I do not wish to see the extinction of these old ways of knowing, for I do believe that there is still value in acknowledging the spirit in a tree and understanding how to disarm an enemy with words. Rather than seeing a contest between druid and Christian, I see a kinship between stone chapel and stone circle. One encloses and protects the spirit; the other exposes it and joins it with the elements. In both of these places we conjure the powers that affect and transcend us. We remind ourselves, in both places, that we need oats and milk, but we also need what we cannot see or put in our food bowls.

  While throwing husks to my family’s pigs and scratching at the bumps the fleas made on my skin, I waited for my call to the knowledge of what isn’t seen. I encouraged rumors that I already had certain powers, such as the ability to turn a stone to dust by breathing certain words onto it, though I confess now that I had none. I waited for one of the druids who attended the chieftain to take me as an apprentice, for I had reached aimsirtogu.2 As I waited, I distracted myself with the powers girls wield over boys and which Saint Patrick and Saint Augustine consider sins responsible for the fall of all mankind. I have read and transcribed our bishops’ rules that say women must not try to be attractive to men but must scorn the qualities in themselves that cause men to fall from grace. It has puzzled me that men, who claim more and more authority over women, show such fear of those whom they call weak. Perhaps they are hoping that women will come to believe that they need to be protected and dominated, but I cannot imagine any woman being so foolish. I wonder if Eve’s seduction of Adam was the result not of evil moral frailty but of her restlessness. Perhaps Adam was more easily amused and satisfied than Eve, who wanted more than the life of a child in a pretty garden. I do not mean to blaspheme, only to show an understanding of the scriptures from my own faults. From the time of my first woman’s bleeding, I suffered from a restlessness I could not understand or cure. Frequently I wondered if I did not belong in the Glen of Lunatics.

  The boys who came to use my father’s boat praised my breasts, which were small but well rounded. The boys who came to use my father’s boat wanted to touch my breasts or to pretend to suckle, and I saw no sense in this until I came to know Giannon the Druid, and then the things said to me by the boys who came to use my father’s boat seemed desirable and compelling.

  I had known two druids before Giannon. One was the master of the ritual of laws and was called upon to make a judgment in the case of thievery or murder. The other was consulted on matters of agriculture and fate that needed thorough knowledge of the calendar and the movement of the stars. Both also knew some medicines, but my mother knew the plants more fully. These two druids and other travelers passing through our túath told various stories of druidic miracles, but I never myself saw a druid summon lightning or bewitch a man by whispering against a straw and casting it at him. But when a certain darkness, such as a black fog, traceable neither to smoke nor to cloud, came over us, the people said that this was a druid’s trick. Stories even tell of battles fought between the druids and Saint Patrick in which each man summoned the source of his magic. Patrick was always victorious, and the druid was mangled in some way, his skull usually being crushed by the power of God as summoned by our first saint.

  I had heard of Giannon the Druid because he came sometimes to advise the chieftain and was a master of words and histories. Once when I was holding my little sister by the wrist and striking her leg with a wooden spoon, as my older sister had done often enough to me, I raised my eyes and Giannon was there, as though having created himself from the air. He glared at me with eyes the deep brown color of the Pool of Remorseful Deeds, where shamed men drown.

  When he saw me beating my sister’s leg, he did not ask a question, but I felt the need to answer one. Pointing to the whimpering child with the spoon, I said, “She has disobeyed me,” for she was in the habit of biting, which I did not like. Giannon took the spoon and tapped me lightly on the head, as though the spoon were a yew stick and he were making a spell. He smiled, and I saw that his teeth were good. Then he strode off with a peculiarly erect posture and long gait. His brown cape swung back and forth slowly. Giannon had hair the reddish brown color of oak leaves on the edge of winter. Beardless, he had a profusion of eyebrows, unruly and humorous, which he seemed to comb outward for whimsy. His fingers were long, and I felt that he had once, perhaps as recently as that morning, been a tree, thick branches raised like arms, leaves like the tatters of a cloak. He well liked hurling and had a reputation at the fairs for winning many competitions. I have felt his arms and know that they were strong.

  That night I dreamed that I showed my breasts to Giannon and that they grew large in his hands. When I asked my mother what his powers were, she told me that his greatest power was to dispel merriment in others. But she said also that he could take words out of people’s mouths and turn them into marks that he put on stones or leather as a man makes a diagram of his home in the dirt with a stick. She said that he could then read these marks at a later time; these marks could be read by another man even years after the one who made them was dead. Then, the one who was reading would hear the exact words of a man long dead and turned to dust. This began the period of my life which I call the Breathless Times, in which I connected the power of conquering death by using these marks with my desire to take my cloak off and lie down beside Giannon. I felt the possibility of transcendence using both my body and my mind, not yet understanding the concept of a soul as something that needed the intercession of a Christian priest.

  The immortalizing power of words possessed my spirit like a voice in a madman’s ear. Whereas I saw neither metamorphosis nor magic swords in my future—things that seemed remote and exceptional—I became sick with a desire for Giannon’s knowledge and his admiration. I asked the world around, above, and below to give me the power to turn a man’s voice into permanent marks and to free me from every obstacle to this power. I left sprigs of holly and raven’s feather at the pool and sacred trees, asking that Giannon, whose face had strong bones, be my teacher.

  At that time my túath had heard little of the Christians except at the fairs where the tonsured men spoke of the hero Jesus and showed the people improvements in plowing and husbandry. The monks were gaining a reputation for new methods and tools that made certain tasks easier. They brought plants from Britain that grew well in thirsty ground, and they asked only that the people who loved the plenitude these improvements gave participate in the recitation of phrases that the monks taught, such as the declaration of one’s belief in the three gods in one. Our lives were harder then than now, for we had to labor hard to eat a little. We did not understand the benefits of fasting for spiritual reasons; fasting was nothing other than extreme hunger imposed on us by the absence of food. In some years the elderly and the infants died before their time because of hunger. To improve our lives and reap bigger harvests with new instruments and methods, what did it matter to alter our rituals and prayers to please our benefactors? We did not forsake our own spirits, which still lived in the trees and pools no matter what we proclaimed to the monks. We believed that the spirits of our land were permanent elements, like air and water. They had no need to be jealous if we made new sounds in praise of new heroes. The man thousands of miles away who had, it was said, defeated death for those who followed him, did not threaten the spirits who formed themselves into oak and yew. Like the tree on which Our Lord Jesus Christ was sacrificed, they and all the plants and animals and elements had a part to play in all adventures and revelations. It is no mystery that the Pelagians—those Christians who taught t
hat all things are part of God and therefore good—found an easy welcome in this land where each twig is divine. And I am sometimes sorry that Patrick was sent to rid us of those heretics. God forgive me if I blaspheme. I am humbly recounting the events as they occurred before my understanding of the Church’s merciful authority. Even now, like the Pelagians, I do not understand a jealous God, for if He made all things, then any form of worship that protects His creations and is not destructive or cruel to them must please Him. But I swear that I am not a Pelagian.

  The people of many túaths to the north of my own allowed the tonsured men to show them a better way to harvest barley and breed horses. In such times, the raiding between túaths lessened, and in Tarbfhlaith we continued to be pagans but enjoyed a period in which none of our people were found dead in their fields with their pigs stolen. The people who listened to the tonsured men asked many questions, and the druids who attended the chieftains in those places debated with the monks. They asked, “On what kind of a tree was this hero Jesus sacrificed?” And the monks often answered, “It was the yew tree,” which they knew was sacred to the druids, who made their staffs and wands from the yew tree. Now they make the ancient wells and standing stones into Christian relics, attributing their powers to saints. I do not quarrel with this practice, for I believe that which is sacred does not care by what name it is called. But I often wish that I did not know history so well so that I could believe more thoroughly in the Christian rendition of our landscape. Knowledge often spoils devotion.

  Those in the eastern parts of this land, who first knew Our Lord Jesus Christ through the Pelagians, were told by the tonsured men to lay down that doctrine as though it were boiling poison. For it was spoken by a heretic who did not understand the sacred status of priests. These debates were not known to me when I lived in Tarbfhlaith, but only after I came here to serve Saint Brigit and transcribe the scholarly writings of the church. Now I know that Saint Patrick came to this land to make certain that the Christians here put down and renounced Pelagian ideas, which were treasonous to the pope and all bishops, saints, and priests who must protect the souls of the ignorant. Saint Augustine of Hippo revealed the Pelagians as heretics and saved Christians from notions that damn their souls. This is as I have read it. But in the days of my youth these matters were remote. My túath remained un-Christian, and my aim to become a druid was not challenged with religious arguments.

  Unde autem audenter dico, non me reprehendit conscientia mea hic et futurorum.3

  SECOND INTERRUPTION

  THE SKY HAS STOPPED RAINING, but the dew is heavy still and frosts the ground until the time for our meal. Our footsteps fall hard on the ground and the sun is small. I have put more cloth around my feet in order to travel about the abbey and its gardens. I asked about the infant who was brought to our convent and have learned that he is dead. The goatherd seemed not interested in the child’s fate and gave the little corpse to me in soiled blankets. The bundle was so light that I had to unravel it to be sure a soul was there. And so I saw the unfortunate infant, blackened by the worms that diseased him. I spoke to Sister Luirrenn, who went to the houses clustered around our abbey to find the mother, but could not. We have all nineteen sisters debated as to how to bury the infant; several do not believe it right to put the unbaptized soul in consecrated ground, and since we have no ceallurach,4 Sister Luirrenn said that we should bury it in the garden. She is our elder, and so that is what we did. The garden is unkempt since the last rains, full of unwanted tendrils and grasses. Though the cabbages love the water, there are herbs that have drowned. Sister Aillenn wept and shivered as though standing in a frigid wind, whispering that the child would bloat because the ground was so well soaked. She begged Sister Luirrenn to let her pile stones upon the little grave and erect a cross made of yew branches. Sister Luirrenn saw no harm in this and allowed it. Sister Aillenn’s skin seems made of white wax. I stare at her often and think of beauty wasting, like a perfect apple lying on the ground, which will rot before it can be tasted. But beauty and perfection do not guarantee grace and fulfillment and are always sacrificed. Life itself seems a ritual of sacrifice, and the world the altar on which plants and animals lay their own lives for the sustenance of others, and on which we lay our youth, our well-being, our loved ones, and finally our lives. I am an ignorant woman who has sacrificed all of these things but the last, and cannot say for whom or what I perform this unrelenting ritual.

  In working close beside Sister Aillenn on the infant’s grave, I noted that her hands tremble and she has cuts as though an animal had made marks on her neck. These mortified me, and I was angry when she seemed uninterested in her own wounds. I asked her if she were weak, and when she answered that she was, I told her to go and get copog phadraig,5 which women commonly use after their full moon time. She said then in whispers that plant gathering was not Christian. I told her that I go often with the women in the lay settlement and gather medicinal leaves and blossoms as well as some roots. Sister Aillenn told me, as horror made her eyes large, that I should not do such a thing and that any weakness she had was a result of her sinful nature, which only the Lord Jesus Christ through his servants could correct, as long as she did not give herself over to demons.

  I do not know demons well and have never seen or heard one, for I do not hear voices, nor do I have compulsions whose origins I cannot decipher. But her words and her face made me afraid, and I thought then that demons were near. I wanted to weep for the weightless, helpless infant, who could not fend off even the smallest demon. I determined to distract myself by engaging Sister Aillenn in a theological discussion and asked her opinion on the nature and origin of demons. She answered that a woman, especially one who appears to others as beautiful, has many invisible demons surrounding her that cause people to sin. I wonder if she has taken these ideas from Saint Paul and Saint Augustine, who connect self-disgust with righteousness. Self-hatred seems to me an evil thing in itself rather than an antidote to evil. If we practice self-hatred, then the sacrifice we make of ourselves and our lives is not sacred, for it is then a gift of something we hate rather than of something that we have nurtured and loved.

  As a scholar I am searching the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ, especially where He has given lessons concerning demons. I do not yet understand the interpretation of His words by Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. May God forgive me. In the Christian religion the truth seems to transform, which is to say that many scholars chastise the writings of their predecessors with revelations of new truths. I am often confused. But do not think that I am not grateful for the home I have found in the bosom of Saint Brigit, who provides me with peace and the writings of many lauded scholars.

  I do wonder, however, at Saint Augustine’s philosophies, because I am ignorant. I still lack understanding of his complaints against Pelagius, whose followers I knew many years ago. Is it not possible that a man may speak to God directly? Is it not possible that all that we see around us, being created by God, should be considered holy? Is it not possible that instead of original sin there is original grace? I ask these things because I am ignorant. May God forgive me. For the rituals of this place do genuinely soothe me, and the voices of the nuns as we sing the psalms penetrate all my doubts and promise a transcendence of the pain and sorrow our feet walk through each day.

  Sister Aillenn informed me that the new abbot is her authority on matters of sin and demons. Her devotion to him is thorough, and I envy it, being myself sometimes weary of my sin of doubting and questioning. The abbot has no official authority over the nineteen nuns who keep Saint Brigit’s flame, but he is the elder of a handful of monks who have built their own dwelling here and share the chapel. Our Sister Luirrenn speaks with the abbot but does not defer to him. He acts as anamchara,6 as we have now been told that only men may perform this and other rites.

  As we are supposed to do, the nuns and monks recite the morning hymn and thirty psalms at noon, saying together, though separated by the cloth that hangs betwee
n us in the chapel, Deus in auditorium meum intende.7 The monks are young, and the abbot does not laugh with them or listen long to their complaints about hunger. Many who come here do not understand the kind of devotion this new god asks for. In the past in our land, suffering was something that one did not seek out but which came easily enough on its own. One sought instead both to accept and avoid suffering. We celebrated the seasons of no pain or death, the seasons when rain came at night and the sun shone during the day so that a man’s wounds did not fester and stink. We sought pleasure and believed it was a blessing and not a sin. We hated pain, be it inflicted on one man by another or inflicted by unseen beings or forces we could not overpower.

  Therefore, many of the young men and women of this land who come to this place because they have been told that Our Lord Jesus Christ has conquered death do not easily understand the need to feel hunger and shame in order to be given grace. Those who come here from Britain are better suited to the life of a convent, since that land was Christianized before us and by more thorough means. That is why some say that Sister Aillenn is a Briton, for she seems to love well the harshness of this life.