Tom Madden

Epitome of Family History

‘Not to know what happened before we were

born is to remain perpetually a child, for what is the

worth of a human life unless it is woven into the life

of our ancestors by records of history’

Marcus Tullius Cicero 106 -43 BC.

We will follow in the footsteps of St Brigid, who sought betterment of soul and body for all. In this book you can travel through and enjoy a vast pictorial record of our historical communal sites.

Among the Celts there is a universal concept and acceptance of The Privilege of Knowledge. Its attractiveness lies in the fact that knowledge can belong to anyone living or dead – look at the amount we learn from people long gone through their poems, songs, music and dance and the bealoideas and the unique Irish skill of the Seanchai and the old documents both religious and lay– without being under constant attack by the corrosive power of wealth or might.

Knowledge resonates like a bell over time. We only have to be actively listening to connect.

“The more carefully and appreciatively we look at our history, the more we are astonished, and the more things we see worthy of admiration.”

Druids took no part in war. They trained the memory and could learn great numbers of verses. They could retain and retrieve vast details of facts and just as importantly recall them with accuracy of content. Essentially, they were chroniclers enabling mankind to strive for betterment and progression.

Military colonisers always stamp down on the history of their new victims and impose popular bits of their own History in an attempt to legitimise their foul deeds endorsing the belief that The First Causality of War is Truth.

On my being asked to contribute written articles on the background of St Brigid’s to the National School in Lackagh, near Brigid’s birthplace I came into contact, with a loose grouping of men and women, who were steeped in the oral tradition and who possessed encyclopaedic knowledge on the locality of Brigid.

Their verbalising in béaloideas of the real history of Ireland, contrasts sharply with “the allowable history of Ireland” being peddled as part of the ‘dumming down’ being imposed on our schools by various ‘popular media’ in what is an act of cultural colonialism.  Poems of the Dispossessed by Sean O Tuama and Thomas Kinsella is an informative study and a clear exposure of the dichotomy in handling of the story of the Irish in their own land.

The following narrative on St Brigid, in this book, is intended to give a voice to the Dispossessed. To do so is an act of re-possession and gives needed purpose to what follows in this book. The History of Ireland has been written from the top down. The top didn’t belong to the Irish through most of our existence. Our oral poetic, song, dance and storytelling culture provides an enduring repository of knowledge of a proud and talented people.

The history of a nation is not in parliaments and battlefields,

But in what the people say to each other on fair days and high days

and in how they farm and quarrel and go on pilgrimage.

These things has Charlton recorded.

W.B. Yeats