Telling the Bees

Lives of the Wild Saints #7

St Modomnoc of Ossory
Ireland/Wales. Sixth century

They came in a great cloud across the sea: pressing closer, rising above the tides, their sound battling with the sound of wave and wind. They rose from the green and headed into the grey, but they did not come of their own will. They were following their master home.

I will tell you the story of Modomnoc and the bees.

Domnoc, in fact, was his name, but where he came from a ‘Mo’ would be affixed to the names of the most loved. Mo-Domnoc, he became: my Domnoc. As if he were a boy still cooed over by his mother. What love he earned, though, didn’t really seem to come from people. The bees, I think, loved him better than the humans. Perhaps he liked it that way.

Domnoc was of the Ulster royal line, but he didn’t have the soul of a prince. He didn’t have a soul that seemed attached to very much of this world. As a boy he would wander and dream and get under the feet of his mother, and she would say that his eyes always looked through her. Upon what was his gaze fixed? He seemed to be swimming in some tide of his own.

Me, I always believed he had the soul of a bee. Perhaps this is a blasphemy - a priest could tell me, I suppose, though I don’t care much for debates. I just felt that Domnoc was a stranger here. He flew through the world, but with some purpose of his own, seeking some hidden flower. You’ll never see a bee who seems lost, never see a bee who doesn’t seem at home in this world. It is only humans who aren’t at home here. This is because we came from somewhere else and we are going back there, and sooner than we think.