13 July 2026

On my bookshelves, I have a book  entitled, ‘The Edge of Glory’. It is a book of prayers for personal and group use written by David Adam, formerly vicar on  the Island of Lindisfarne. I bought it forty years ago  in 1986 with its  alluring  subtitle, ‘Prayers in the Celtic tradition.’

Adam begins his introduction with these words, ‘Whoever wrote St. Patrick’s Breastplate has certainly caught the essence of Celtic prayer.’ We sing two versions of this great hymn in our Church Hymnary. Mrs Alexander’s ‘I bind unto myself today’ (Hymn 639) and Father Quinn’s delightful ‘Christ be beside me’ (Hymn 577).

The last forty years has seen an extraordinary interest in what is called Celtic Christianity. It is largely illusionary inspired by Alexander Carmichael’s fascinating six volume, ‘Carmina Gadelica’. He was a tax official working across  the Hebridean islands and  collecting prayers and runes which had been passed down by word of mouth.

A lot of the subsequent Celtic publications were dependent on this source material. It inspired others to create compilations of these prayers, write their own prayers in this idiom, create liturgies in the style of this collection. But how authentic was all this to Celtic Christianity.

The romance of Celtic Christianity was stimulated by the Iona Community. Their leader once declared that it was more Lowland than Highland and began in Glasgow not Iona. ‘But we share with the Columban church an incarnational and creaturely spirituality, and in fact  it is this which people see and name incorrectly as Celtic.’

In his analysis of Celtic Christianity, Bryan Spinks finds little evidence of original material save in the Stowe Missal. He says of Celtic forms of worship,  ‘Like contemporary medieval fairs, they  can be fun, people seem to enjoy them, and what is more, they also frequently make money.’