Timothy ONeill - Airy Plumeflights: A Beginners Guide to Celtic Script and Design

I cannot have been more than six or seven years old the day my mother took me to Kildare. It was Easter time, and she was going there to visit her aunt who for almost fifty years had lived in St Brigids community. As we travelled across the wide grassy plain, my mother told me of how St Brigid had received from the local king all this land which the monastery still controlled. After my mother and her aunt had talked for what seemed hours, we went to the big stone church to pray before St Brigids fire. It has been burning continuously for about three hundred years, and people come from all over Ireland to pray before it. We had been there for a little while, when I suddenly noticed on the main altar, open on a stand, a huge book with colours that glowed in the reflection of the fire. My great-aunt, seeing how fascinated I was, brought me closer to the altar where I could gaze up at the marvellous designs and pictures. On one page I could see four angels, one standing and three lying on top of large letters, and a purple frame was drawn around the page. The top corner of the frame turned into a monsters head with a long tongue winding in and out of its mouth. It looked scary, especially in the flickering light. My great-aunt explained that the angels were the ones who sat in the empty tomb to tell the apostles that Jesus had risen from the dead. She said that this page was always open during Easter Week but I was only half listening to her. I could have stayed for ages looking at that page. The more I looked, the more I saw. There were two birds in the middle of a letter and an entire flock of blue and yellow birds around the border. I was able to count at least twelve of them, but couldnt be sure.

Soon we had to go, but I had seen something that I would never forget, and I couldnt stop talking about the book and asking all kinds of questions as we travelled home next day. My mother tried to answer as best as she could, but finally gave up and told me to ask Fergus the priest who sometimes came to our cranng and who had all the answers. He actually visited us some days later to bring Easter communion to my grandfather who wasnt able to go out anymore, and afterwards my mother told him about my fascination with the big book in Kildare. He smiled and said that he also had a book with some pictures in it, and would I like to see it. With that he took out of his leather bag a small fat book and undid the clasps to open it. Imagine my excitement when he asked me if I would like to take the book and look at it outside in the sunshine! My mother sent me down to the lake to wash my hands. When I came running back she had a deerskin spread on the ground outside. She then handed me his book it was heavy because of the wooden covers, and I needed both hands to hold it. I sat down impatiently and opened a book for the first time! I must admit that I was a bit disappointed because of all the writing in it, pages and pages full of tiny letters, and since I could not read I kept turning pages to look for pictures. I found four pictures and four pages of brightly painted letters. These I can remember very clearly: there was a man with wings who looked a bit like the angels on the Easter page in Kildare; there was an eagle with brightly painted feathers, a sharp beak and pointed claws. There was a very good picture of a calf just like the ones I had to look after except this one had wings like the eagle. The strangest of all was another animal, very fierce looking with four legs, claws and lots of hair around his head. Later the priest told me that this beast was called a lion. I was frightened by this drawing at first and had some nightmares about it, but my mother told me that there were no lions in Ireland at all and that the painter had made up the drawing out of his head.

As time passed I kept thinking of books and pictures of monsters. My brothers made fun of me because I didnt play war games or have sword fights. I also disliked hurling because my fingers were often hit.

When I was ten years old my father arranged with the head of the monastery school at Kells that I should go there to study writing, painting, reading and books. That was four years ago. I liked the school, and at the end of the third year I did quite well in the Latin, writing and drawing examinations. This test will explain what we learned in the monastery school.

First came the Latin exam. In the junior school we learned Latin and prayers together because we study the psalms. I was asked to recite from memory ten psalms selected from the first fifty psalms. The teacher examining would say the first few words of a psalm, and the student had to continue. After the recitation we were asked to translate certain verses into Irish and explain them. The exam in writing was the hardest. The master gave each of us a piece of vellum which had, on top of the page, the opening words of a psalm written out in his own beautiful script. We had to continue writing the psalm, having cut our pens to match his and ruled the lines correctly. I was pleased to get Lavabo inter innocentes, a psalm I remembered well because it was always said during mass.

The final part of the test was to draw and colour the first letter of the psalm which the master had left out. On my sheet this was L, a letter I liked, and one which I knew well from examining decorated examples in gospel books. St Matthews gospel begins with L, Libergenerationis, and the first words of gospels are always beautifully drawn. Anyway, I passed all sections of the exam and was promoted to work in the scriptorium full time, and since then I spend most of my days copying out books.

My cousin Dara, who really wants to be a metal worker, did poorly in the written exam. He told me afterwards that he didnt recognize the psalm at all and spent most of his time pulling the little feathers out of his quill. He always says that he finds writing boring and prefers to be carving. He makes beautiful designs on bone and spends all his free time in the metal workshop where he is sometimes allowed to work the bellows of the furnace.

The scriptorium is a great place in which to work. I like it because it is quiet, bright and comfortable. Absolutely no talking is allowed, and the only sound to be heard there is the scratching of pens. There is a room beside the scriptorium where the vellum, quills, paints and other materials are stored. Here one is allowed to speak in a low voice, and the master is in this room first thing every morning to deal with any problems the young scribes might have. Sometimes I would have to ask him to help me read a difficult passage or perhaps check a spelling or the meaning of an abbreviation. I found the abbreviations very difficult at the beginning, and I still often have to consult the list I made then which I keep by my desk. Some scribes who just copy all the time can be very accurate pen-men, but I always like to understand what Im writing, and I love to see familiar passages. Its very important, however, not to let the mind wander as any mistake or carelessness breaks the rhythm and often means working through mealtimes to scrape and rewrite a page. A piece of vellum which has been scraped more than once can be harder to write on, and the rumbling of an empty stomach is a dreadful embarrassment in the silence of the room.