Increasingly, of course, even those saints who remain housegold names are little more than names, so an obvious question is why the Irish of today, and especially the young Irish of today, should care about them.

Whereas, what is your relationship with someone like Jesus? Some of the martyrs in Egypt who were beheaded last year, and one of them muttering the name Jesus as they were about to take the head off him: he had relationship there.”Springing forward a few centuries, Ireland has contributed to global knowledge of the world around us in many other areas. Robert Boyle, a Waterford man known as "the father of chemistry", was one of the first scientists in the world to suggest that matter was not made of earth, water, air and fire (as was thought at the time) but was instead made up of smaller particles, which we now know as atoms. Maud Delap, a self-taught marine biologist who studied specimens off the shoreline of Valentia in Co Kerry, made major contributions to understanding the complex life-cycles of jellyfish and other marine life. And we are likely all familiar with the story of William Rowan Hamilton who, in a moment of inspiration, inscribed his quaternion equation on Broom Bridge in Dublin – an equation which is now core to programming 3D graphics. Some of the new technologies had originally come from the first century, says Charlie Doherty, a retired lecturer and researcher in early Irish history at University College Dublin.

I would think there was something very strongly missionary about the Irish converts to Christianity,” Fr Ó Ríordáin says. “Now, part of it would be finding a desert, a desert in the ocean, somewhere to go and say their prayers, but when they got there there’d be people living about the place and they’d reach out to them in need – the good decent thing in an Irish situation where you look after the neighbours and if you find them in need you look after them.” There are many stories and tales about the saints’ bold and brave deeds, including Lí Ban transforming into a mermaid, Colmcille confronting the Loch Ness Monster, Gobnait setting a swarm of bees on raiders and Ciarán’s spirit returning to smote raiders with his crozier! Piecing the lives together from strictly historical texts and hagiographies – saints’ lives intended to provoke wonder and provide models for holy life – entails some thoughtful and creative work, Fr Ó Ríordáin continues. Their iterary output in the Middle Ages wasn’t very great, in terms of how their commentaries on the Bible were utterly boring”It is during this period Ireland earned the title Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum, the Island of Saints and Scholars. Following the Roman Empire’s collapse in the 5th century, Europe was in a state of serious intellectual and social decay as its institutions crumbled.

I think that’s important – when you reflect on that it makes total sense, because you’re establishing a new tradition,” he says, recalling Chesterton’s line that pagans were wiser than paganism, which was why they became Christian. It strikes him as plausible too, he adds, that Brigid may have deliberately Christianised an earlier pagan shrine, as St Gregory the Great would later advise St Augustine to do in his mission to the English. Other saints who would have inherited pagan attributes and anecdotes would have includes St Senan at Scattery Island, who would have acquired details originally linked with the pagan river-god Seanan, he says, adding that St Ailbhe in Emly would similarly have been an inheritor of a long pre-Christian tradition. The celebration of St Brigid’s Day on February 1 – the pagan feast of Imbolc – was probably intended as a symbolic gesture, Fr Ó Ríordáin says, noting that with this being seen as a hinge of the year, with the worst of the winter being over, it was a fitting day to celebrate somebody who represented a new beginning for Ireland. But what's especially interesting about Derrynaflan is the priceless buried treasure likely left here by the monks. Discovered just a few decades ago, it changed Irish law and turned out to be one of the most exciting archaeological finds in the history of Irish art. It was that bit more benign,” he continues. “Columbanus’ rule was tough, no questions about it, and he expected it from his monks, and wouldn’t expect anything more than he’d put up with himself.”was a trailblazer. Leaving home at 16 on a donkey, bringing her younger sister Fíona with her, she set up a monastic school at Killeedy (Cell Íde) and later became the foster mother of the saints of Ireland. She was a mentor to St Brendan. The Irish even borrowed the Roman alphabet so they could translate Latin documents and help themselves to the latest devices. You always have to keep a focus on where does Christ fit into the picture, and the Christian way of life, so I would be looking out for anything that would be pointing in that direction, from whatever century is might be,” he says. “The ‘New Age’ stuff doesn’t do a lot for me, and I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it. I know it goes on and it’s available and so on, but I don’t delve much into that world.” That prominent holy people should have become associated with older stories linked with pagan forerunners seems, in fairness, far more likely than folk becoming confused and thinking pagan deities were really Christian monks and nuns. One is reminded of how C.S. Lewis asked a friend who had recently read G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man whether he had got it into his head that the ancients had brains every bit as good as ours. Celebration

Born in County Donegal in the 5th Century, Saint Columba/Columcille was descended from great Irish nobility, tracing his ancestry to Niall of the Nine Hostages, the legendary Irish High King. I’m eternally working in a kind of multidisciplinary world where I’m drawing on resources from all kinds of sources, whether it be history or theology or hagiography or a whole range of other things. So, I would set out to find out first of all what do we know historically, and very often I would dip into Thesaurus Paleohibernicus, which is kind of a collection of primary sources,” he says.

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Cummian's expertise was shown in letters dating from 633 between him and the abbot of Iona, Ségéne. Cummian had changed his method for calculating the fall of Easter, breaking away from the method adopted by monasteries founded by Colm Cille and adopting the one used in Rome. This caused Ségéne to accuse Cummian of heresy. The Celtic Peace Garden at the IOSAS Centre is the culmination of the Columba Community's work of reconciliation over the past 20 years. It is built near The White Oaks Centre and brings serenity and healing to visitors and to the residents of the centre. The seventh miracle occurred, apparently, when St Féichín raised a two-tonne stone doorway lintel into place by the power of prayer in the 10 th century – when he had been dead some time. Despite the time travel issues, the lintel remains in place to this day. Other idiosyncratic features include a hermit’s cell and a fine cloister arcade built later as part of a Benedictine priory by landlord Hugh De Lacy, who also constructed Trim Castle (a setting for the movie Braveheart) about 20 miles away. A marked trail around Fore covers most of the sights, and it is a remarkably beautiful setting. In Fore village is something else that hasn’t changed in a while – the Seven Wonders Pub.