Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

The leather satchel that Cormac Maguire and Niall Dawson discover at Killowen Bog is based on fact as well. After the discovery of the Psalter, previous artifacts discovered at Faddan More took on a greater significance. I visited the Collins Barracks Conservation Department at the National Museum of Ireland in June 1999 while doing research for Haunted Ground . On the very day I toured the conservation lab, a technician was beginning work on a leather satchel that had just been discovered in a Tipperary bog—at a place called Faddan More. Ned Kelly, Keeper of Antiquities at the National Museum, told me that the workers who discovered the satchel described it as looking “for all the world like Tina Turner’s miniskirt.” The satchel was found only a few yards from where the Faddan More Psalter turned up seven years later. Archaeologists say there’s no way that the book and the bag can be definitively connected, but Irish monks commonly used leather bags to carry and store their precious books. Depictions of Irish monastic life show satchels hanging from pegs in early medieval scriptoria. The wax tablet discovered in this story is based on the Springmount bog tablets, which you can also see as part of the Faddan More Psalter exhibit at the National Museum in Dublin.

As to the existence of John Scottus Eriugena, the ninth-century philosopher named in this story, both he and his pseudonymous scribe, Nisifortinus, are real historical figures. We know from his name that Eriugena was Irish-born and that he lived from about 815 to 880. He was known for his knowledge of Greek and for the originality and breadth of his ideas; he is often called the most creative thinker of the Middle Ages. He lived and worked for many years at the court of Charles the Bald (grandson of Charlemagne), and his work On Divine Predestination (he argued against), and his magnum opus Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature ), still provide fodder for lively debate among scholars. Paleographers have long pored over early manuscripts of his work and tried to distinguish between Eriugena’s own handwriting and that of his assistants and scribes. The sixth book of Periphyseon imagined here is a complete fiction, although Eriugena did leave a note at the end of Periphyseon apologizing for all the topics he’d been obliged to omit from the preceding five volumes, “because of the weight of the material I had to deal with and the number of doctrines I had to expound,” and offering his pledge to deliver soon, point by point, on the promises contained in the text.

Since Book Six of Periphyseon is a fabrication, so, necessarily, is the cumdach , or shrine, in which it was purportedly encased. Such jewel-encrusted book shrines are real, however, and you can see some wonderful examples on display at the National Museum of Ireland, or if you’re willing to veer off the beaten path, there was a particularly fine example at the Boher parish church in Offaly, but it was stolen by treasure hunters in the summer of 2012 and may not be returned to its original display. The notes that Nora discovers about a particular family charged with protecting the Book of Killowen are also part fiction and part fact, pieced together from actual accounts in Annála Ríoghachta Éireann , Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, by The Four Masters, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1616 , translated and annotated by the great Celtic scholar John O’Donovan and published in 1851, and Devenish (Lough Erne): Its History, Antiquities, and Traditions , by Canon J. E. McKenna, published in 1897.

I extend grateful acknowledgment to all who assisted with background material for this novel, including Eamonn P. Kelly, Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, who generously answered questions about archaeological fieldwork and artifacts, and the scourge of treasure hunting in Ireland; John Gillis, Senior Conservator at Trinity College Library, who was responsible for painstakingly rescuing the pages of the Faddan More Psalter; Julie Dietman and Matthew Heintzelman of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, who arranged access to, and answered many questions about the medieval manuscripts in their collection; Dermot O’Mara of Sunny Meadow Farm, Powers Cross, County Galway, for organic farming information; Dáithí Sproule, for advice and assistance with Irish language usage and translations; Molly Lynch O’Mara and all of her Mountshannon farmers’ market cohorts; and Ann and Charlie Heymann, for the loan of books about Irish scribal arts. To Jody and Sean Henry, who looked after me with such kindness after the unfortunate misstep at Dun Aengus; and to Mary and Sean O’Driscoll and Brian and Margaret McGrath, who provided me with sustenance and a place to lay my head on the follow-up research trip, thank you. Thanks to Shawn Kearney, both for her enthusiasm about becoming a character in this story, and for her generous donation to the important work of the American Refugee Committee. I’m grateful to my entire extended family for letting me slip off to a quiet space to finish writing this book in the midst of happy chaos. Thanks to my wonderful aunt and uncle, Betty and John Rogers, for jumping into our Irish travels with both feet and for their support through this and all previous endeavors; to Lisa McDaniel, for providing encouragement and distraction when needed in equal measure; to Karen Mueller, who walks along beside me on the daily path of creativity; and to my pal Bonnie Schueler, to whom I am indebted for her example of unbridled joie de vivre and so much more. Sincere thanks, once again, to the incomparable Sally Wofford-Girand (along with assistants Melissa Sarver and Kezia Toth) of Brickhouse Literary Agents; to Samantha Martin, Shannon Welch, Greg Mortimer, and Susan Moldow at Scribner; and to Susanne Kirk, the most patient and gracious of editors. I’m grateful to my sweetheart, Paddy, for cooking many a splendid dinner (too many to count, really) while I was out wandering imaginary bogs. So, to all of the above, and to any others I have inadvertently neglected to mention here, a toast: Your blood should be bottled. Go mhéimid beo ag an am seo arís .

ERIN HARTis a theater critic and former administrator at the Minnesota State Arts Board. A lifelong interest in Irish traditional music led her to cofound Minnesota’s Irish Music and Dance Association. She and her husband, musician Paddy O’Brien, live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and frequently visit Ireland. Erin Hart was nominated for the Agatha and Anthony Awards for her debut novel, Haunted Ground , and won the Friends of American Writers Award in 2004. Visit her website at www.ErinHart.com.

JACKET ART © THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

JACKET PHOTOGRAPH © RICHARD CUMMINS/CORBIS

COPYRIGHT © 2013 SIMON & SCHUSTER

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