A Poem, Author Unknown

The next time you are in your local bookstore browsing your way through a rainy day I would like to recommend a book to you: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. It is a wonderfully rich glimpse at among other things; the Fall of the Roman Empire, Saint Patrick, and the Irish monks who painstakingly copied ancient manuscripts that were elsewhere being destroyed by barbarians. I love the book because it is written, at times, just slightly over your head but never so far as to be out of reach and you are constantly rewarded for slogging through some of the tougher sections with these incredibly alive and downright edible portions of text that will keep you mentally munching for days afterwards. It is one of those books that not only makes you feel smarter than you are but one that actually sticks with you and well..., makes you smarter. Two sections I'll recommend for quick browsing in the store before you inevitably buy it, St. Patrick's prayer on pages 116-119 (hardcover) and pages 152 - 164 (hardcover) or just 159 - 164 if you are in a hurry. The latter section deals with the monkish scribes who actually sat down and copied word for word ancient manuscripts. It has quite a few excerpts from the notes that they would make in the margins as they either interacted with the text or fought off boredom. Hands down one of the most giddy and thrilling pieces of writing (besides Yancey and Manning) I have ever laid my eyes on. Cahill sets the scene so well, you can feel the cold, damp air through which green and rocky hills appear and recede in the fog as young bookish men attempt to keep warm while hunched over musty smelling texts. These men come to life through their various postscripts and suddenly you realize, we are not all that different, us and them. I'll leave you with an excerpt from page 162 that goes nicely with The Moussacre of 07 on my cousins' blog.

"Perhaps the clearest picture we possess of what it was like to be a scribal scholar is contained in a four stanza Irish poem slipped into a ninth-century manuscript, which otherwise contains such learned material as a Latin commentary on Virgil and a list of Greek paradigms:

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his."

Not exactly groundbreaking poetry I realize, but when you consider the context, it becomes a classic. Imagine for a minute that there are no printing presses and you make a living by hand copying word for word such classics as The Catcher in the Rye or Crime and Punishment. Tedious, tedious work, the only thing keeping you from going insane with boredom is your love for the written word. As you copy you entertain yourself by making up little poems in your head that help you pass the time. And then in one heady and mischevious moment you decide to write your poem in the margin or at the bottom of the page, a bold act that declares "I am here! I matter!" This poem is not just about the words, because of its context, it is one of the most essentially human poems I've read, containing the essence of what it is to live down here. "You are not forgotten anonymous Irish scribe, 1200 years later your poem still rings true. For chutzpah alone you are a legend in my mind, may we meet in heaven one day where you can introduce me to Virgil and I will introduce you to Helprin."

How the Irish Saved Civilization was the first of what is now five and will eventually be seven books in the Hinges of History series by Thomas Cahill. I have also read The Gift of the Jews and would recommend it as well. His latest is called Mysteries of the Middle Ages, a book so beautiful it caused drool to run down my chin as I browsed through it mouth agape at the bookstore last month.