molaise - abbot of leighlin and Hermit of Holy Island: The Life and Legacy of Saint Laisren in Ireland and Scotland

Colum Kenny

Morigna Media Co

ONE of the most potentially significant recent developments in these islands has been a recrudescence of a sense of separate identity within the Celtic hinterlands of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Nationalism is on the march; passive acquiescence in the United Kingdom can no longer be taken for granted.

Not the least merit of this scholarly little book about a man who died over 1400 years ago, the facts of whose life are so difficult to chip away from the hagiographic, legendary encrustations, is that it takes us back through the mists of history and folklore to a time when our geography was identical, and our politics so elementally different.

The man known today in Ireland as Laisren and in Scotland as Molaise was born to what anachronistically we would call an Irish father and a Scottish mother - anachronistically, because in the sixth century neither Ireland nor Scotland existed.

What did exist was a Celtic thalassocracy, a lordship of the sea centred upon islands and extending from modern Ireland to modern Spain. ''Ireland'' was a congeries of kingships, about 150 septs or clans in all, warring among themselves.

''Scotland'' was inhabited by Picts in the north, by British Celts in the central region and South, and by the Dal Riada (also known as the Scoti) in the West Highlands and Isles. The Dal Riada had come from Antrim to colonise this area, bringing with them Christianity, the Gaelic language, and the name by which our country is presently known.

Laisren's maternal grandfather was the first Gaelic king to be ordained as such by a Christian priest, and this priest was Colum Cille (the dove of the Church), also come from Ireland to settle in Iona.

Laisren's mother was a Scoti, one of the Dal Riada; his father was an Ulster king. It is piquant to reflect that the Scots were originally Irish and that all were Celts. That Council of the Isles idea, proposed in the Good Friday agreement, has a long history subtending it.

The facts about Laisren's life are sparse. He turned his back upon kingship in Ulster and went back to his mother's land to become a hermit in Holy Island, off Arran, following in Columba's footsteps. He visited Rome, was made a bishop, returned to Ireland to become abbot of the monastery at Leighlin, County Carlow. Most authorities think he died and was buried there, but some on Arran will tell you different.

At Leighlin today, the Church of Ireland (owners of the Cathedral) join with the Roman Catholics (holders of the surrounding land and its holy well) to celebrate his feast day on April 18. Would that the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland could find a comparable unifying figure around whom to congregate. But Laisren is not only important as a key to the past, as someone who can surprise us by showing us that we are far more clearly related than we ever suspected. More decisive still, he is a signpost to the future: an ecumenical figure bringing different Christian churches together, a leader of Celtic Christianity which some authorities believe to have been more pristinely pure than more recent forms of institutional religion, an important figure in the new idea of ''heritage'' (cathedral, wells, caves, etc) that the European Union is so keen to encourage. Perhaps most important

of all in the long term is his startling connection with Buddhism.

The new owner-occupants of Holy Island are exiled Tibetan Buddhists who were attracted to the island as a place of long-established holiness and worship. they have plans to establish a modern, inter-faith retreat centre in the Firth of Clyde, and the links with the various Christian churches have to date been promising.

The Buddhist reverence for the living world answers to an environmentalist element in modern ''Green Christianity'', and all of this finds its focal point in this hazy, indistinct Celt who lived and died so many centuries ago. Creatively suspended between wealth and poverty, Ireland and Scotland, Pictland and Alba, Iona and Rome, conservation and change, helping to build bridges, not only between the different Christian churches, but between members of two world faiths, Laisren is indeed a man for all seasons, all peoples and all beliefs.

This is a rewarding book that will amply repay all who read it.