The Nomadic Alternative – Page 207

Meat is not mentioned in their diet, but the story of Colman mac Duach says, "The skins of wild deer served as their clothing. Watercress, water and the plants of the woods were what they lived on at that time." The skins of wild animals are the traditional clothing of hermits, and their use implies no inhibition against killing an animal, only when it is necessary to do so.

But this total absorption in the wonders of their native land did not prevent the Irish monks from becoming the most obsessive wanderers of Early Mediaeval Europe. The ocean was a desert of water, the Celtic Christians its most fearless navigators. "Peregrinatio", wrote Thomas Merton, or "going forth into strange countries, was a characteristically Irish form of asceticism. The Irish peregrinus or pilgrim set out on his journey, not in order to visit a sacred shrine, but in search of solitude and exile. His pilgrimage was an exercise in ascetic homelessness and wandering."

The call of the sea is the call of danger to be overcome. Like storm-petrels, the monks in their skin-covered curraghs were washed over the grey swell of the North Atlantic. The great virtue of the ocean was its tracklessness. The Voyage of Bran says, "The Ocean is a hard thing for men if they sail in a fragile boat. The breakers alarm them greatly. For the horses of the sea do not respond to the bridle." They were ignorant of their ultimate destination, but the Master of the Elements would show them the way - a concept not unlike the "Wayless Way" of Meister Eckhart where the sons of God lose themselves and at the same time find themselves.

Islomania affected these Irish. A bird-covered rock was to be a monk's final meeting place with God, the scene of his resurrection or release from the cares of this world. The desert island in the middle of the sea was the "Promised Land" and by casting off into the watery desert the monks believe they followed the steps of Abraham when he forsook the city of Ur to come to a better place. Hope for a better and more beautiful island lured St. Brendan to cast himself adrift on the sea. Hell he had known. It was a harsh gloomy prison, a place of bars, man-made implements and