Janet Burnham, Bethel, Vermont Please CLICK on underlined categories for further details. Strange as it may sound, there is some quite convincing
evidence that Irish Culdee, or Celi Dei, Monks and other European settlers
may have preceded the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers as the first permanent
European settlers in New England by well over a millennium (see Nyland, O’Meara, 1994 and Pyle 1991). The Berbers and the Basques are known to have
explored the Atlantic for 10,000 years and almost certainly were in North
America long before the time of Christ (see Sanders,
1985). Robert Pyle
in All That Remains records that the colonial settlers in Northeastern
America encountered blond Iroquois tribes that may have been the same group
responsible for carving the Horse Creek Petroglyph of West Virginia, which
has recently been translated by Edo Nyland
as a Libyan Ogam inscription. In New England there is a ruined
complex of approximately 30 stone buildings at North Salem, New Hampshire. It
is speculated that whoever built the complex might have sailed up the
Merrimack River as far as what is now Haverill where they would have been
stopped by a natural barrier, the falls. Then traveling inland a short
distance from Haverill one comes to the site where the North Salem community
was constructed. Unfortunately,
in the early years of the twentieth century a self-styled archeologist
monkeyed with the North Salem site. He moved stones with a bulldozer. He put
stones where he judged they should go. He didn’t do any of the minute
examination that is part and parcel of today’s carefully examined and mapped
historical sites. Still, even if the stones were not returned to their proper
places, the basic ruined site still exists…it’s just been rearranged. It’s
still possible to see very clearly that someone was there, someone who was
very used to building and working with stone. So, who built North Salem? Who worked with stone? Not
the Amerindians. Early settlers? If early European settlers did build North
Salem, why would this be the only place where they used such an abundance of
stone? Stone is not in short supply in New England. They could have built
innumerable communities of stone if that was their preferred building
material. There are further clues on the site. One structure called
the Y cavern is thought to have been a place of worship. It has a niche that
could have served as an altar. There’s a large flat table stone weighing 18 tons or
thereabouts with a continuous groove incised all around the outer perimeter.
There’s a channel cut in one side to drain whatever is being caught in the
groove. Was it blood? Or could it have been grape juice? Under the stone slab
is what appears to be a hidden speaking tube, which would allow someone in
the adjoining stone house to speak and have their voice seemingly emanate
from the stone. It is known that the Culdee Monks had oracles. Could this
have been a site where the resident oracle spoke with a disembodied voice
when an animal had been sacrificed? There are also two wells on the site. One shaped like a
saltcellar - getting wider as it descends into the earth - has a plentiful
supply of water. The other, a small perfectly round well, is only eleven feet
deep and never has more than 6 inches of water at the bottom. It is thought
to be a fairy well, hundreds of which are to be found in Ireland. Fanning out into New England from North Salem are
numerous individual “caves” throughout western Massachusetts, southern New
Hampshire and eastern Vermont. These “caves” appear to have been constructed
in much the same manner, as are the buildings at the North Salem site. There
are a total of approximately 65 of these man made caves known and recorded.
More of these in a moment. What further proof of Irish Culdee Monks in America is
available? One place to look is the Norse sagas. They state that the Irish
reached American before Leif Ericson. The Norse sagas are stories of daring
deeds, indeed, boastful recountings. It doesn’t seem reasonable to suppose
the Viking story tellers would credit the Irish with being in America before
their great hero Leif Ericson…unless it were simply undeniably true. One Norse sage tells of a Viking named Ari who was
baptized by Christian priests in America. Further, the Icelandic sagas refer
to a place on the American mainland as Great Ireland. They also mention
seeing white men dressed in robes, carrying lighted torches and chanting
hymns that disappeared into a hole in the ground. Let’s see how well we can retrace the Monks route to
the New World. Sometime around the year 795 AD the Vikings or Norsemen
began to raid the islands and coasts of Scotland and Ireland. They found the religious
communities with their prized religious relics to be easy pickings. Further,
the Vikings were not noted for their kindness but for their ferocity. They
terrified the people of Europe who offered a special prayer for help against
the Vikings: “God, deliver us from the fury of the Northmen.” The Norsemen
very often killed the people they defeated including women and children. The
word “berserk” which means insane comes for the Viking’s word for warrior. Eventually of course some of the Vikings would stay in
Ireland. The Vikings founded the towns of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford and
Limerick. The red hair for which the Irish are famous can most likely be
attributed to Viking or Pre-Viking Libyan ancestors. But before the Northmen settled down to become
assimilated into the people of Ireland, the religious communities tried to
protect themselves from these fierce marauders. One of their means of defense
was to build stone towers. From the towers approaching Viking ships could be
seen. Perhaps the most famous stone tower is at Glendalough. The entrance to
this 103-foot tower is 10 feet off the ground. Was this a stronghold in time
of siege or simply a bell tower? No one can say for certain. There’s a record of the Monks journeying in
hide-covered boats called coracles to Iceland. An Irish Monk named Dicuil who
wrote the history of the world in 830AD wrote it down. There’s a further
mention of the journey in the FLATEYJARBOK a collection of Icelandic sagas
written in the 13th century. Did the Irish Monks leave Ireland for Iceland to escape
the Norsemen? Perhaps. From the Icelandic Book of Settlement (LANDNAMAABOK)
there’s this: “Before Iceland was peopled by the Northmen there were in the
country those men whom the Northmen called papas” (priests). “These were
Christian men who would not remain here among heathens, and the people
believed that they came from the West, because Irish books and bells and
crosiers were found after they left…”
Another opinion on why the monks left Ireland suggests that the
Norsemen were not antagonistic to the Irish population but rather came to
their assistance Edo Nyland, pers. commun.).
They terrorized and chased out the Benedictine monks who were
destroying the vibrant Irish civilization.
The records of these incidents unfortunately come only from the
Benedictines who wrote everything down while the Irish did not. This time the Monks sailed to Greenland. The Greenland
colony lasted for 108 years, from 874AD to 982AD. This, too, is documented in
the Icelandic sagas. In 982 AD Eric the Red was expelled from Iceland for
three years for murder. He and his band of Vikings sailed into Greenland to
serve out his exile. Again, the Monks sailed on, out of reach of the Northmen.
This time they sailed to New England. The Culdees, or Celi Dei, which means “servants of God”
were the Christians of Ireland before St. Patrick. Their brand of
Christianity mixed old pagan beliefs with the newer ideas of the European
Catholic Church. The Culdees disliked ecclesiastical management. Beyond an
Abbot, or headman, they felt that each was a man of God with no need for
anyone else to whip them into shape. To know God was their complete
sustenance for which they disciplined their bodies to endure the hardships of
hunger, cold and deprivation. They owned no personal property except the
clothes they wore. And they lived as recluses or in small loosely organized
groups. Continental European Christian leaders took a dim view of
these Irish Culdees who were Gnostic or Coptic Christians who did not use the
Judaic Talmud in their holy book but rather only the early Gospels of
Christianity of which they had far more than we have in our bible of modern
times. For example, the Gospel of
Thomas, of the Gospel of Jesus was not acceptable to Rome. Emissaries were sent to Ireland to
“straighten out” these misguided Christians. The report came back that the
Irish were “impossible” and the Irish church completely decadent. So what happened to the Culdees? Where did they go? It
is theorized that the Culdees who remained in Ireland were eventually
assimilated into the Augustinian order. One of the last mentions of the
Culdees was in the 16th century when their deaths are recorded in
church documents. How about the American branch? Since it is known that
Gnostic monks never were celibate, perhaps some of their number intermarried
with the Amerindians. There is even some mention of white priests among the
Aztecs. And then of course if many were celibate they simply died out. Back to the caves that have been found in
Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.
These man-made stone shelters are not natural caves. They were built
of stone laid up without mortar sometimes in rectangular shape, sometimes in
a beehive (conical) shape. Huge capstones weighing perhaps one half to one
ton each form the roofs of the caves. The interior dimensions vary from
approximately 5 x 6 feet to 8 x 20 feet. Interior height is approximately 5
feet, 2 inches in most. A large lintel capstone covers the entranceway. The
tops of these structures are usually covered with earth, which makes them
seem to disappear into their surroundings…. and gives them more of a
cave-like appearance. It was
suggested by Edo Nyland (pers. commun.) that they probably were religious
structures, designed like New Grange in Ireland to measure the
solstices. If they believed in
reincarnation then the caves were the womb of the deity where rebirth took
place. This same group or their
predecessors also may have been responsible for writing the Horse Creek Petroglyph in West Virginia that
has been dated to 600-700 AD. To be fair there are people…some of them very learned…who
say these “caves” were built by the early settlers in the region as
“root-cellars” in the 18th and 19th centuries. While some of the structures are
near houses, many of them are not. One is on top of a mountain one half mile
from the nearest habitation. Some are 100 or 200 yards across fields from the
nearest “first” house on the property. The deep snows of winter would make it
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reach the “root-cellar” on the top
of the mountain in winter. Even the “root-cellars” that are closer at 200
yards are too far away from the house to be easily accessed in winter. Almost
without exception Colonial root cellars were built under the house or within
a few steps of the house. There’s one Vermont
“root-cellar” with a smoke hole in the roof. Again, no root cellar ever had a
fireplace. There is the suggestion that these cave “root-cellars”
were built to protect the early settlers from the Amerindians. This cannot be
so. Even though the caves are topped with dirt and from some angles could be
taken for natural rises in the land, certainly no Amerindian who earned his
living following invisible trails in the woods, would be fooled for a moment. One elderly gentleman in Windsor County Vermont on
whose property stands one of the stone “caves” says that it was there when
his grandfather settled the land. His grandfather was the first to clear the
land for farming. When his grandfather came to the virgin tract, the cave was
there! A thousand years and more is a long time to try to
trace a slender thread back through history. Still, a pretty plausible case
can be made to support the idea that Irish Culdee Monks were the first
European settlers in New England. And it can further be said that they came
to these shores for the same reasons that those who followed in their
footsteps came…for freedom to live and work and worship as they chose. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ References Cited (Also see Bibliography) O’Meara, J. J. 1994.
The Voyage of Saint Brendan.
Four Courts Press, Dublin. 95
p. Pyle, Robert L. 1991.
All That Remains. Charleston, WV: Cannon Graphics, Inc.. Sanders, N. K. 1985.
The Sea Peoples: Warriors
of the Ancient Mediterranean Thames & Hudson, London.
224 p. |