Confessions of a Pagan Nun

by Kate Horsley

  I did not know and still do not know what message would give me the greatest comfort, for all signs in the end seem to be desperate interpretations by those who must have some explanation for the pain of living. Were I to enter a copse of yew and oak and see in the center an ogham,1 what would I be most happy to see written there, protected by the moss of ages? The Ten Commandments admonish me to behave a certain way, and for what purpose do I follow them? I am promised the Kingdom of Heaven, but what then will I do forever in the Kingdom of Heaven, unless there is a bliss that I do not understand, that is eternal without being tedious? When I ponder eternal life, I sometimes imagine a time when I will be sorely weary of endlessness. The idea that every movement, every vision goes nowhere but to an endless space of more movements and visions seems almost horrible. Then I prefer to think of the variety of lessons and the series of beginnings and endings inherent in incarnation into other bodies; or of the peace of ceasing to have thoughts and my body becoming crumbs that feed all who live after me. But believing one thing rather than another does not make that thing the truth.

  The night I left my mother’s corpse and my túath, I walked in the direction of the next túath, which I had never seen but knew to exist through the ferny woods to the west. I knew that it was two days’ walk away from Tarbfhlaith and that Giannon lived near it. I slept against a hill where old leaves had collected. It was a cold night, but the hill stopped the wind and the leaves covered me like a well-woven blanket. Just before dawn, I ate some of the bairgen, which I had wrapped in cloth and put into my pack. Shivering, I thought then of returning to my own túath and resuming life as Thayll’s sometimes wife and as my father’s helper as I continued to study and meet with Giannon when he came to Tarbfhlaith. But I could not yet go back. I was someone else; I had been transformed and could only pretend to be the Gwynneve that my túath knew. I thought to wait until I knew who Gwynneve now was and then return.

  My plan was to find Giannon, who would allow me to grieve and who I believed understood what my grief encompassed. I would continue to learn the stories, for I had three hundred and forty-eight more to memorize. As I wandered through the deep woods, I passed the farthest place I had gone to with my mother. I stopped there and sat beside the pool where she had carefully washed pebbles and chewed leaves. The place became still and I felt her there; even the water did not trickle, the leaves did not flutter, and no birds sang. I could almost see her, bent over with passionate concentration and then looking up to see me and smiling. Thunder drummed in the distance. In one breath I grew afraid of my grief. A spirit tempted me to slide into the pool, soaking my cloak and hair and sinking to the bottom where the spirit’s sad sisters would clutch at me and help me to drown.

  I ran from that place, weeping and cursing the vines and branches that whipped my face. When the sun was overhead, I stopped again, in a clearing with yellow clouds and blue sky as its roof, and I did not know where I was. I was confused and drained of calm reason. In terror, I sank to the ground and looked at the unfamiliar configurations of trees and colors and land around me. I muttered over and over to whatever invisible spirits I entertained there that I was lost. I sat down to tame my breath and an unusualpeace overtook me. There was still the low drumming of thunder somewhere to the south, but a bird twittered over and over in a tree nearby, its lack of concern a satire of my panic. I recognized my terror as a child’s terror about being lost and not seeing one’s mother again. I understood that I did not have to fear that any longer because my mother was dead. I was lost to her and she to me, no matter where I was, so that now I was free to be anywhere without hoping and waiting for her protection.

  This is a strange philosophy. But it provided me with a peaceful grief and an ability to walk forward, assuming that I would either live alone, according to my own wits and knowledge of the woods, or I would find others who could clarify my intended direction. I would return to Tarbfhlaith with some authority with which to gain respect and purpose. I longed for Giannon, but did not believe that haste would increase the certainty of finding him. He often traveled and could be in any túath in the land. I lay down and slipped into a half world, neither seen nor dreamt, where logic becomes one shape in an intricate geometry with many heights and depths. In such a half world, a man lies frozen on his bed, believing he must rise in order to restore his head to his body with clay. He does not question his certain logic until he is fully awake and then may laugh at himself. In such a state, I believed that if I spoke to Giannon, repeating three times each phrase, he would hear me wherever he was. And my teacher in this effort was the bird that continued to sing the same three notes over and over.

  I awoke to the liquid trills of another bird, a dusk bird, and rose quickly to my feet as though the sound of its song had pinched me. The world was darkening, and I saw in the distance the orange lights of fires. I walked toward them, not knowing their size or origins. If fairies were luring me to some enchantment, then I would fall into it; if the fires signified a túath, then I would welcome them and find company or death by a warrior’s angry ax, thus giving some man an easy entry into a tale of enemy killing. I wound a leaf around my finger and wished that whatever creatures I found were friends to the people of Tarbfhlaith. I was not well acquainted with the enmity between various túaths, which in fact changed according to warriors’ whim.

  As I moved toward the flames, I saw that they were huge in size. There were dozens of fires. I waited in a patch of brambles and tried to understand what I saw. Each fire was three times the height of the men in hoods and cloaks who were coming and going between the roaring hills of flame. Animals, some small such as hares and some big such as wolves, ran from the flames; some of them were on fire, and I could not look at them but had to hear their screams. It seemed as though an entire valley was on fire, and the black smoke eclipsed the first stars. I wondered if I were not seeing another realm, where worlds were created and destroyed by humans who served angry gods by stoking the fires. For what deity they did this work I could not say. I cowered in the forest, squatting and holding my knees, afraid to move.

  The fires burned all night, and I left that place, though I might have left comfort and help. I walked northward, keeping the flames always to my left. I was not long away from them when I saw the black silhouette of a circling wall and was glad to find a túath, though I had no knowledge if the people there were friend or enemy. Soon I came upon a herdsman and shyly let him know that I was a wanderer and an apprentice to a druid. He showed no fear of strangers and shared bread and cheese with me though my hands were dirty. I here give thanks and praise to this herdsman, whose name I do not know but whose generous hands I have never forgotten, and to his good goat. How small an act of kindness can be to the giver while being great to the receiver. This man knew of Giannon and could tell me in which direction his home was. But I was interrupted in my journey by those gleemen whom I first saw at the Fair of Tailltenn.

  FIFTH INTERRUPTION

  IN THE CONFESSION OF FAULTS I will have to mention my arrogance, which grows as I transcribe the writings of Saint Patrick. Perhaps it is not of importance to his sainthood that his Latin is ragged and I must correct it as I copy. But now I often remember the stories told to me by Giannon about Patrick, whom the druids called Taillcenn, a man slow to be merry. He laughed at no satire, especially those that told about him.

  There is the story of his journey across the sea to Britain. He came upon a set of rough boatmen and asked them to take him in their boats to his destination. I do not know if at this time Patrick knew that he was a saint, though he had declared himself bishop and everyone in the land had heard of him and knew his appearance. The mischievous mentold Patrick that they would take him in their boat only after they had suckled him, and they showed him their bare chests. Blasphemed, Patrick refused, claiming that as a Christian he could not perform such an act. The men laughed so hard that they bent to the ground and then slapped Patrick between the shoulders as though he were a cousin. Th
e leader of the boatmen called out that if he had known that Patrick was a Christian, he would have met his demands without hesitation. He said, “Indeed, there is no fee at all for taking a Christian out of Ireland.” Though this story is wicked and its truth uncertain, it gave Giannon and other druids much pleasure. Patrick himself records this occurrence as a sample of the power of Christianity.

  It is hard to know the truth in the matters of saints. Some still say that Sister Aillenn is a saint because of her suffering. But if suffering makes saints, then all the people of this land are saints. When I trade cabbages with the people whose homes clutter the hillside beside the convent, I see pain in every eye. I see the woman whose husband I sat beside after he was trampled by the wild horse who runs in this region with a companion mare. I see the young girl whose brother died of lung worms; he sat on my lap while I wiped his brow, sweated from the labor of dying. I see the woman who brought her baby here to die. She hides her face with her hair and does not brush the grass from her cloak. She wanders about like the one who dreams but does not sleep. I have combed her hair and seen the scabs on her scalp. Sometimes I bring her a piece of parchment with words on it and tell her it is a blessing. Each time I see her she grasps my hand and begs that I bring the infant back to her. She is consumed by guilt, for she believes that she made a grievous error in leaving the infant with those of the new god who planted him in the ground with no thought to the heroes and gods who might have cared for his soul until it found its way to a new home.

  I place my hand over her blistered lips when the abbot passes us and she is muttering about her breasts, which swell to feed an infant who is no longer able to suckle.

  1. Ogham: stone on which words and marks were carved, sometimes to mark a grave or place of significance.

  [ 6 ]

  THESE WORDS set down the events that I carry in my mind. I give thanks for the ability of words to fix for all times the lives of the saints and the doctrines of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But here I humbly and gratefully use them to immortalize the lives of two beings whose genius and beauty have died before they were recognized. Now that I have told of Murrynn, whose voice trickles in my head, I pray that I do not die myself before I am able to set down the character of Giannon. The dead potential of my mother and my teacher is a burden that agitates me, for I cannot re-create it, only record it. Thus is the limitation of words, which only God can make into flesh. My beloved mother, whose wild joy was tempered by her calming touch, and my brother Giannon both thwarted their own genius, owing to what purpose or shame I cannot say. Perhaps it is weariness that causes the seers not to act on what they see; for whereas the wisdom of the world can be vast, it includes the many futilities. Ideas do not have legs with which to run and hands with which to craft. They are wisps of smoke floating into a universe of pain and ignorance that overwhelm the capacity of one small human body and the mind trapped inside it. My mother’s devotion to a husband beneath her in wit and effort caused her own life to wither. Giannon’s devotion was to his solitude. Had I known how deep this devotion was and how painful and destructive it would be, perhaps I would have stayed where the shepherd fed me. But the shepherd’s chin was weak. I searched for Giannon, knowing that he was the match to my own soul and wanting his hands to know my skin.

  In this search I walked for one day from the shepherd’s túath. At dusk on that day I saw another fire in the woods, but this one I determined to be small. Still, I was cautious in approaching it and came slowly to a clearing where I found a merry sight. Five human figures were arranged in an unusual geometry around the small fire. I recognized the oblaire at once because of his forked beard and thinness. He was standing straight as a stick, lecturing to his fellow gleemen, two of whom lay straight as rods beside the fire. The younger juggler was upside down, with his head where his feet should have been and his feet in the air, pointing to the pale clouds. The woman sat with both legs extended outward in the air next to her ears. It was with surprise and joy that I recognized this troupe. I was glad to see a face I had seen when my mother was alive.

  I came through the brush and introduced myself as a woman who had seen them at the Fair of Tailltenn. They welcomed me warmly, the woman taking me to her side to sit by the fire with her as though I were her charge. She held my head to her breast and said, “Here, then, the loss of your mother is a poison in your body, girl, but it will not kill you.” Even when the grief was not severe, there was still a bitterness in all the food I took. When I told her that I was now looking for Giannon, she said that he was traveling, and she said that perhaps the poison had stricken my reason or left me weak to the mischief of certain fairies who could inflict me with a desire to visit such a man. I explained that I was his apprentice, and I showed the scroll to the troupe. The oblaire narrowed his eyes and said, “Giannon is a solitary man, sour and unfriendly. And like all druids, he knows he is done for.” This statement put frost on my heart, for I did not expect to hear my mother’s doomsaying from other mouths. I said, “My mother, who is recently dead, warned of the Christians and their ambitions.” The oblaire did not speak and walked away. The woman told me, “He is a Christian, a Pelagian.” I did not know then what manner of a Christian a Pelagian was, thinking them all the same. But I was weary both from traveling and from grief and asked no questions. I laid my head in the woman’s lap and let her stroke my hair as though I were her child. Because of her tenderness, I stayed for a time with the gleemen in that place.

  Their lives were free and unusual, though not as privileged as the lives of the aes dána. At their camp they practiced their arts and brought food, which they got from the nearby túath of grain growers. They spoke of their route and the fairs they would attend. These decisions were shared by the oblaire, the woman, and the younger juggler, for one of the musicians—the drummer—was a half-wit, and his brother the trumpeter watched over him. The drummer was like a child though his body was large like a man’s. One day his shoe caught fire while still on his foot. He was thereafter tied to a tree for the night. I spent my days studying the scroll and helped my companions gather foodstuffs in the woods. We worked hard to feed ourselves and to keep a supply of dry wood in the cart for the times when it rained and when even our bones were damp. The younger juggler hunted and roasted birds, which tasted delicious to me. I became the wife of the younger juggler, whose chest hair gleamed in the morning light as though some of the strands were made of orange gold. I well liked his warmth at night.

  One night during a storm I heard the half-wit howling and crying like a dog. I got up from beside the younger juggler and went to him. When I untied him he beat me so that I had to cover my head with my arms. The woman woke and wielded a large stick, striking the half-wit many times to get him to loosen his hold on me. In the morning I was unable to rise quickly from the ground. The half-wit gave me his portion of milk and wept. I had no quarrel with forgiving him, for fear and ignorance struck the blows as much as his fists. The gleemen were becoming my family, and I well love them even now, though those who still live are pagans and heretics and hidden from the punishment of the Christian bishop. I thought still of Giannon, speaking to him as though he lived inside me and dreaming of his enfolding and protecting spirit as my lifelong comfort. But I waited for the swelling and marks on my face to heal and languished in the security and comfort I had with the gleemen, who amused me well. I laughed at the trumpeter, who could mimic the voice and movements of any human or beast. I liked most his imitation of the oblaire, whose stern accounts of the new god irritated his friends greatly.

  The oblaire schooled me in the Pelagian doctrines. He was devout and passionate in his conversion, which had occurred when he was a boy and his family had drowned. I listened with interest as the others snored or waved their hands for him to stop talking. But here was a man who, through neither force nor promise of increase of his stores, had turned to the new religion. It may be well for the Church to thank rather than persecute those who worship Christ though they do not worsh
ip priests, for their conversion brings them closer to the truth so beloved by the priests. But I am ignorant of these matters.

  Perhaps there should be another account of the Pelagians besides those of Saint Augustine. It may be valuable to have other sources of information concerning the various heresies. The oblaire said, “The hero Jesus Christ has proven his power over death. He does not fight the waves with a sword, as did Cuchulain, but walks on the water without sinking or drowning. He does not rage against the worms and decay of this world, but touches a man and heals his sores. There is no fairy mischief in Christ’s kingdom, nor bickering gods who promote wars. The hero Jesus offers a life without suffering, eternal life in Paradise, for Godgave His grace and the hero Jesus brought the message of God’s grace. This tree, this leaf, this sky are part of God and his grace. Who wants to continue this round of suffering, battles, famines, and worms? In each mote of dust there is God and His promise of Paradise.”

  The half-wit pressed his hands against his ears when the oblaire spoke these words, for he was afraid of fairies. He said that the fairies were jealous of Jesus. But the younger juggler said, “I do not see the harm in telling stories about the hero Jesus and also setting out milk for the spirits that live and play around us. Jesus is not from our land; the people of this land know its power and cannot pretend to forsake what they see and feel and hear around them every day. You can call the spirits that live in the pools and trees God’s grace if you like, old man. But if Jesus were from this land he’d be putting milk out for the fairies himself.” And though your skin may turn red at his blasphemy, could you not consider it and also consider such men harmless sons of their pagan mothers? I say here that I am ignorant and do not understand the persecution of the Pelagians, who love Our Lord Jesus Christ without loving priests and bishops and others who elevate themselves with the hat they wear or the staff they carry. May God forgive me.