Covered in Birds

Lives of the Wild Saints #5

St Kevin of Glendalough
Ireland. Fifth-Sixth Centuries

I like to visit monks, but I don’t trust them.

The stories that are told about these people are usually ridiculous, which is why I don’t trust them. But it’s also why I seek them out. It can be amusing to compare the story with the person. You are told that some monk is a saint who can perform miracles, and you find him grumbling around in some cave doing nothing. You are told another can fly, and you find him bandaging his leg after a fall down the filthy hillside he lives on. You hear that another can walk on water, but he shows no signs of even having washed with it.

I sound like a cynic, but I am not. Just a simple merchant, who seeks out interesting stories as he moves around the country. Trudging these sodden roads or crashing about in some foetid cart can be grim work, especially in rain or snow. Something has to brighten the days. And since the country is full of monks and tales of miracles, often I seek them out. If I sound like a cynic it is because some monks have made me cynical. Saints! I have not found one yet.

Well … perhaps one.

I would not be honest if I didn’t admit that within me there is a desire to discover that some of these miracles are true. That saints do exist. Perhaps this is also why I like to visit monks. Perhaps I want to believe that the acts of the apostles of old are not just stories for the credulous. What if a man could walk across a lake? What if a saint could fly? What if the dead could be raised, or the blind healed with a prayer? Then the world would be a different shape altogether. Then it would not only be coin and taverns and tears and mud and blisters on a merchant’s soles. There would be something else worth walking for.

I suppose I didn’t think such thoughts until I met Coemgen. This was a monk who had lived for years halfway down a cliff in a place called the Glen of the Lough. I heard of him when passing thereabouts, and was told the usual stories. He lives naked by the waterside, living only on air. He is so saintly that his prayers are answered before he even makes them. He is so holy that he seems to be part of the rock, the water, the wood. He once walked across the lake to reach the other side … etc.

I decided to visit this Coemgen on the basis of one particularly delicious story. Some peasant told me that when he was praying the cross vigil, a blackbird perched on one of his outstretched hands and began to build a nest. Naturally the saint stayed in this position until the bird’s eggs had been laid and its chicks had fledged. By my amateur calculations, this monk would have had to stay standing in the same place, holding the same stance, for at least six weeks for this to be true. Therefore, either this was the usual nonsense, or this was the monk with the strongest arms in Ireland. Either seemed a good reason to visit.

Coemgen did not live in his cliff cave anymore, it turned out. When I came to the Glen, I was directed not down to the loughside but into the woods. It was spring, and the forest was beautiful. The birds sang in choirs, and celandine and nettle flowers brimmed along the path edges. Soon enough I came to a small clearing, in which I found a rough hut of clay and wattles, which looked almost beautiful itself in the April light.

Outside the hut, a man was sitting on a small stool milking a deer.

Yes, I do understand your response, but it’s true what I say. He was milking a deer. Not for long, though, because when the creature saw me it started and bucked and fled into the woods.

The man turned and glowered in my direction. You frightened her, he said. Then he rose from his stool and stalked into his hut without another word.

I felt like I should leave, but I had come all this way, and in any case this was clearly an interesting case. Soon enough it became much more interesting: from inside the hut came the crying of a baby.

Again, I understand your response, but yes, I did say a baby. A monk with a baby. It was obvious he was not a saint after all.

Since this was the case, I became less concerned about approaching the door of the hut and peering inside. When I did so, I saw that it was indeed a baby and that the monk was enticing it to drink milk from a cup in his hand.

Yes, said the monk, whose back was to me, it is the deer’s milk, since that’s what you’re thinking. And since you’re also thinking that you would like to come in, I suggest that you do it. But do it quietly, for Faoláin needs sleep.

It seemed Coemgen was a direct speaker, which is something a merchant can respect. After the baby had gone to sleep - something which happened surprisingly quickly given that it was being lulled by a wild hermit instead of its mother - Coemgen sat me in the glade and answered my questions. I hadn’t known I had questions, but he knew. He knew a lot of things about me. This was when I began to realise he may not have been mad after all.

The child’s mother is a sorceress, the hermit informed me, without my asking. Its father is a local king. He asked me to shelter it from her and raise it well, and so I am doing. If I had my choice I would spend the time praying rather than child rearing, but God has given me a gift to confound my pride. Now I have many new things to learn, including patience, which does not come easily to me. To ease my way, the Lord even provided me with a source of milk. Until you scared it away.

I’m sorry, I said, and was surprised to find that I meant it. The hermit glowered at me from under his thick brow. There was something in his eyes that belied his look, though. Some light.

Yes, he said, it is true that the birds will sometimes drink from my palm. I heard them tell you thus in the tavern, so we may as well clear up the stories. There are some truths and some untruths. Of course there are. People gossip. If you live alone and live only for God then ignorant tongues will wag. But the birds, yes - the birds come to me. Why would they not?

How could this man have heard anything I was told in the tavern? How could he even have known I was there?

Are you a saint? I asked. The words came out before I had even formed them.

A saint! he cackled. Everyone is a saint, little brother. Everyone and yet no-one at all. None of us is fit even to approach the feet of the Saviour, and yet he will wash our feet without us asking. That’s the only miracle worthy of the name.

Why are you here? I asked.

To be transformed, replied the man. What else is there for me? Should I trawl around the country selling geegaws to fools, as you do? You waste away. Go to the woods instead and clean it all out. Wash it all away with vigour. Use your own anger as fuel if you must. Then the birds will come to you too. Then the only surprise, the only strange thing, will be all the people who cannot see what the world is at all. All the people to whom the birds do not sing.

How do you know, I asked slowly, that I am a merchant?

Does it surprise you, little brother? he replied. Why would anything surprise you? But then, I suppose that everything does. A man like you: the Master sings in you always and you cannot hear a thing! You’re barely even alive.

Now I saw that he was toying with me like a cat with one of his birds. It was only the light in his eyes that stopped me from leaving. There was some strain of wide, distant love in them that I hadn’t seen the like of before.

I came here seven years ago, said Coemgen. I lived in a hollow tree at first, and then in my beloved cave. I wore only deerskin and I ate only nuts and seeds. I had nothing, and nobody knew me. In winter I froze, and in summer I was chewed alive by flies. It was the most glorious time of my life, little brother. I wish it for you!

I don’t think so, I said, imagining the flies.

Nobody knew me then, everybody knows me now, the man continued, more seriously. This is my only worldly concern. People who come here looking for me, scaring away my deer and my peace.

I heard a story … I began.

… about a boar, said Coemgen. Yes, I know. You heard that a boar was being hunted and it took refuge in my hut here and the hunting dogs sat down outside and refused to enter until I sent them away. Everybody tells that story around here. Maybe I will write it down myself and save the storytellers the time they put into it.

Is it true?

Of course it is. You ask as if there were some miracle that the creatures of these woods would be brother and sister to one who lives among them. And if you were to live among them little brother, a miracle it would be, for neither bird nor boar loves money as you do! But come here in a deerskin with the love of God in your heart, scour yourself clean of the world, spend weeks saying nothing, never hearing human chatter, fill your heart with prayer. Then they will come to you as they did once to Eve in the Garden.

You talk as if it were easy! I protested. And then I added, more quietly, and I don’t love money.

Ah, you do! smiled Coemgen, but I’ve seen worse cases. I was once one myself. Still, all sicknesses can be healed in the greenwood, little brother. Prayer of the heart, fresh water, silence: try it. Try it for seven years. Perhaps we will meet again after that. For now though, I must check on the child.

The hermit stood, and I stood also, seeing that this was my signal to leave. Unthinking and unbidden, I bowed my head and asked for his blessing, which he gave.

You are on your way, little brother, he said, smiling. Farewell!

Coemgen stood outside his hut as I picked up my bag and stick and left the way I had come. As I came to the edge of the clearing, something made me turn for one last look. There was the wattle hut, the sun direct on its roof, and there was the hermit, standing silent next to it. For a moment, though, I couldn’t make him out. Something looked wrong. It was as if he were made of movement, as if he were a song. Then I understood. He was covered in birds.

This is the fifth story in my subscriber-only series ‘Lives of the Wild Saints.’ You can read the ongoing series here.

Each saint is illustrated by woodcarver Ewan Craig. Read about how he created this image on his own Substack, Stone, Clay and Wood. You can buy limited edition prints of this and other saints in my series in Ewan’s shop.

Saint Coemgen - Anglicised as Kevin - is one of the best-known saints in Ireland. At least five different hagiographies exist, but the earliest, the Vita Sancti Coemgeni, is from around 500 years after his death, and they give little biographical or historical detail. The stories told here can be found in several of them.

As in Kevin’s lifetime, the most widely-told stories are of the saint’s deep connection to the natural world. The site of his cell at Glendalough is now one of Ireland’s most popular tourist destinations, a fact which it is hard to imagine the saint being very happy about.