OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • Saint Blath of Kildare, January 29

    On January 29 the Irish calendars commemorate Saint Blath, or Blathnait. The Martyrology of Donegal records:

    29. A. QUARTO KAL. FEBRUARII. 29.
    BLATH, Virgin.
    and the table of the Martyrology gives the Latin version of her name:
    Blath, virgin (Flora V)….. 29 Jan.
    Blath is the Irish word for ‘flower’, and so the Martyrology of Gorman makes a pun by recording her as ‘blooming Blath’. Her name is thus Latinized as Flora. 
    The notes to the Martyrology of Oengus also simply record her name for this day, but in the notes for the feast of Saint Brigid on February 1st we find that Saint Blath was a member of the monastic household of Kildare, where she had the role of cook. The stories of Saint Brigid often have a domestic aspect to them and the miracle of Loch Lemnachta  is a classic example:

    Eight bishops came to Brigit out of Hui Briuin Cualann, i.e. From Telach na n-epscop to Loch Lemnachta beside Kildare on the north. Brigit asked her cook, Blathnait, whether she had food for the bishops. Dixit ilia non. Brigit was ashamed: so the angel told her to milk the cows again. The cows were milked and they filled the tubs, and they would have filled all the vessels in Leinster, so that the milk went over the vessels and made a lake thereof, unde Loch Lemnachta ‘New-milk Lough’ dicitur.

    In his survey of the monasteries of Ireland, Mervyn Archdall assigned the repose of Saint Blath to the same year that he believed her mistress also departed:
    523. Died Saint Blatha, or Flora, cook to Saint Brigid.

    but he does not expand on the reasons for doing so.

    As not a great deal has been recorded about the life of Kildare’s saintly cook, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at Saint Blath’s domain – the monastic kitchen:
    Domestic arrangements are mentioned incidentally in the texts. A monastery usually had a kitchen separate from the refectory, and this was where the food was prepared. Meat had to be dried and salted. We know very little about how the Irish obtained their salt, although it was an essential commodity, and a lump of salt was an attractive present. It could have been obtained from sea-water by a process of evaporation, but there is some evidence that seaweed was collected and burned and the salty ashes used in curing meat. The monastic kitchen seems to have had no oven, and pottery is rare from excavated Irish sites except in the north-east. Dough for the bread was kneaded in wooden troughs and then baked on a griddle or baking flag, and bullauns which are often found on sites may have been used for grinding and preparing food. A cauldron, suitable for stews, was a luxury article, whilst meat might be roasted on spits or boiled in water heated by hot stones: clay pits or wooden vats could be used for this purpose.
    K. Hughes and A. Hamlin, The Modern Traveller to the Early Irish Church (London, 1977), 44.

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  • Saint Cannera of Bantry, January 28

    Not a great deal is known of Saint Cannera of Bantry, County Cork, commemorated on January 28, apart from the details of an encounter she had with Saint Senan of Scattery Island (Inis Cathaig), recorded in that saint’s Life. The feast of Saint Cannera is recorded at January 28 in the Martyrologies of Tallaght and of Gorman. The latter describes her as ‘dear Cainer’ and notes that she was daughter of Cruithnechan in Cell Cuilinn in Cairbre. The entry in the Martyrology of Donegal reads:

    28. G. QUINTO KAL. FEBRUARII. 28.

    CAINDER, daughter of Cruithneachan, at Cill-Chuilinn, in Cairbre.

    The seventeenth-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, published her Acts at this day, but it is to the Life of Saint Senan that we must turn for a glimpse into Cannera’s life:

    2416. Canair the Pious, a holy maiden of the Benntraige of the south of Ireland, set up a hermitage in her own territory. There one night, after nocturns, she was praying, when all the churches of Ireland appeared to her. And it seemed that a tower of fire rose up to heaven from each of the churches; but the greatest of the towers, and the straightest towards heaven, was that which rose from Inis Cathaig.’Fair is yon cell’, she saith. ‘Thither will I go, that my resurrection may be near it’. Straightway on she went, without guidance save the tower of fire which she beheld ablaze without ceasing day and night before her, till she came thither. Now, when she had reached the shore of Luimnech, she crossed the sea with dry feet as if she were on smooth land, till she came to Inis Cathaig. Now Senan knew that thing, and he went to the harbour to meet her, and he gave her welcome.

    2426. ‘Yea, I have come’ saith Canair.
‘Go’ saith Senan, ‘to thy sister who dwells in yon island in the east, that thou mayest have guesting therein’.
‘Not for that have we come’ saith Canair, ‘but that I may have guesting with thee in this island’.
‘Women enter not this island’, saith Senan.
‘How canst thou say that?’ saith Canair. ‘Christ is no worse than thou. Christ came to redeem women no less than to redeem men. No less did He suffer for the sake of women than for the sake of men. Women have given service and tendance unto Christ and His Apostles. No less than men do women enter the heavenly kingdom. Why, then, shouldst thou not take women to thee in thine island?’
‘Thou art stubborn’ saith Senan.
‘What then’ saith Canair, ‘shall I get what I ask for, a place for my side in this isle and the Sacrament from thee to me?’
‘A place of resurrection’ saith Senan, ‘will be given thee here on the brink of the wave, but I fear that the sea will carry off thy remains’
‘God will grant me’ saith Canair, ‘that the spot wherein I shall lie will not be the first that the sea will bear away’.
‘Thou hast leave then’ saith Senan, ‘to come on shore’. For thus had she been while they were in converse, standing up on the wave, with her staff under her bosom, as if she were on land. Then Canair came on shore, and the Sacrament was administered to her, and she straightway went to heaven.

    2447. God granted unto Canair that whoso visits her church before going on the sea shall not be drowned between going and returning.

    Whitley Stokes, ed. and trans., ‘Life of Senan’ in Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, (Oxford, 1890), 219-220.

    This encounter between the two saints has ensured the translation of Saint Cannera to our own times as a feminist and supporter of the ordination of women. I find it interesting that people today seem to be very taken with the notion that the early Irish church was influenced by the eastern tradition of monasticism, whilst at the same time completely ignoring the realities of that tradition. I doubt that any Greek monk, for example, would find anything exceptional about Saint Senan’s desire to turn Saint Cannera away, for women are banned from entering the monastic site of Mount Athos to this day.

    It is thus unfair to Saint Senan to brand him as a misogynist for wishing to pursue his monastic vocation without the presence of women, something present in the history of monasticism from the start. We are also told on page 221 of the Stokes translation of the saint’s Life that when his death was approaching, Saint Senan went out of his way to visit a community of nuns to whom he had personally given the veil:

    So he went on that side, and he visited Cell Eochaille to commence with Ner’s daughters who were dwelling there, pious, holy virgins, who had taken the veil at Senan’s hand, and who were under his spiritual direction. Then they entreat Senan that the body of (some) lowly monk of his community might be given to them, to be buried by us, so that his relics may be protecting us. ‘Verily’ saith Senan, ‘this shall be granted to you. Be in no distress as to one from whom your protection shall come’.

    In any case, the account of his encounter with Saint Cannera reads to me as if Saint Senan rather admires her stubborness, and he does grant her request. Her memory as a protectress of those at sea seems to have survived too, and I hope to be able to trace a copy of a 16th-century poem which asks for her blessing on a ship and its crew.

     

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  • Muirgen The Mermaid Saint, January 27

    The entry in the Martyrology of Donegal at January 27 must rank as one of the strangest notices ever recorded of a holy woman:
    27. F. SEXTO KAL. FEBRUARII. 27
    MUIRGHEIN : i.e., a woman who was in the sea, whom the Books call Liban, daughter of Eochaidh, son of Muireadh ; she was about three hundred years under the sea, till the time of the saints, when Beoan the saint took her in a net, so that she was baptized, after having told her history and her adventures.
    The earlier calendar of Saint Oengus also records Muirgen on 27th January:
    F. vi. kl. My God loved Muirgen,
    A miraculous triumphant being ;
    They achieved bright victories in presence of kings
    Agna and Conx, virgins.
    and the holy virgin, Murgeilt, is commemorated at the vi. of the February Kalends, i.e. the 27th of January, in the Scottish Kalendar of Drummond.
    She also features in the Annals of the Four Masters:
    The Age of Christ, 558.
    In this year was taken the Mermaid, i.e. Liban, the daughter of Eochaidhn, son of Murieadh, on the strand of Ollarba, in the net of Beoan, son of Inli, the fisherman of Comghall of Beannchair.
    A footnote adds ‘Her capture as a mermaid is set down in the Annals of Ulster under the year 571: “Hic anno capta est in Muirgheilt”
    The legend of Muirgen is found in the Lebor na h-Uidri or Book of the Dun Cow. It tells the story of how the woman Liban was transformed into the saint Muirgen and establishes the setting as the north-eastern part of Ireland around what is now Larne, County Antrim:
    This Liban was the daughter of Eochaidh, from whom Loch Eathach, or Lough Neagh, was named, and who was drowned in its eruption [A. D. 90], together with all his children, except his daughter Liban, and his sons Conaing and Curnan. Liban, was preserved from the waters of Lough n-Eachach for a full year, in her grianan, [palace] under the lake. After this, at her own desire, she was changed into a salmon, and continued to traverse the seas till the time of St. Comhgall of Bangor. It happened that St. Comhgall dispatched Beoan, son of Innli, of Teach-Dabeoc, to Rome, on a message to Pope Gregory [Pope, A. D. 599-604], to receive order and rule. When the crew of Beoan’s currach were at sea, they heard the celebration of angels beneath the boat. Liban, thereupon, addressed them, and stated that she had been 300 years under the sea, adding that she would proceed westward and meet Beoan, that day twelvemonths, at Inbher-Ollarbha [Larne], whither the saints of Dalaradia, with Comhgall, were to resort. Beoan, on his return, related what had occurred, and, at the stated time, the nets were set, and Liban was caught in the net of Fergus of Miliuc; upon which she was brought to land, and crowds came to witness the sight, among whom was the Chief of Ui Conaing. The right to her being disputed by Comhgall, in whose territory,-and Fergus, in whose net,-and Beoan, in promise to whom,-she was taken, they prayed for a heavenly decision; and the next day two wild oxen came down from Carn-Airend; and on their being yoked to the chariot, on which she was placed, they bore her to Teach-Dabeoc, where she was baptized by Comhgall, with the name Muirgen i.e. Born of the sea, or Muirgeilt i.e. traverser of the sea. Another name for her was Fuinchi.
    Commenting on the presence of this ‘wild legend’ in the Annals, Irish Anglican Bishop, William Reeves, sought for a rational explanation:
    A seal, or or some such tenant of the sea, may have been caught in the nets of Comgall’s fisherman, and, as a “sancta Liban [Liban ‘maris mulier’]” flourished about the year 580 “sub magisterio S. Comgalli”, the following generation may have converted the seal into a liban, and St. Liban into a muirgelt (mermaid).
    Reeves also adds the interesting detail that belief in mermaids persisted in the County Antrim area in his own time:
    Nay, it is not twenty years since, in this age of light, a large company travelled all the way from Belfast to this neighbourhood, to see a mermaid which was reported to have been taken in Island Magee!
    This is presumably the same incident referred to here:
    In the same area [where Liban was captured] the Belfast Commercial reported the stranding of a mermaid in 1814 at Portmuck in Islandmagee, where hundreds of people flocked to see her. In his excellent book, The Fishermen of Dunseverick, James McQuilken recounts the sighting of a mermaid by the crew of one of Dunseverick’s fishing boats, while returning from their fishing grounds off Rathlin. One spring morning in the 1880s she was spotted on the rocks at Keardy’s Port. On landing the crew walked quickly to the rock, but she had disappeared. The cynical, of course, may blame the local seal population as the source of these apparitions.
    Canon O’Hanlon, while saying with a considerable degree of understatement that ‘we must receive only with great diffidence the various bardic accounts regarding Muirgen’, nevertheless, supplies a fitting ending to the story:
    ‘The romantic tale of her adventures concludes with a statement, that after her capture, the clerics gave her a choice to be baptized and go to heaven within an hour, or to wait three hundred years on earth, on condition of her afterwards attaining happiness. She chose to die that very hour. She seems to have been buried at Teach Dabeoc, on Lough Derg, in the county of Donegal. Miracles and wonders were there wrought through her. There, too, as God ordained for her in heaven, like every holy virgin, she was held in honour and reverence’.
    So, thus ends the curious tale of Muirgen, the mermaid who became a saint. Perhaps stories like this demonstrate a wish to literally baptize elements of Ireland’s pagan culture. It certainly is not the only example. O’Hanlon draws a parallel between Liban swimming the seas for 300 years until Saint Comghall arrives on the scene and the legend of Fionnuala, the daughter of Lir, who spent centuries in the form of a swan until the coming of Christianity set her free. Yet perhaps there was also a real holy woman called Muirgeilt, as the Drummond Kalendar says, whose story somehow became entwined with this legendary daughter of Lough Neagh.

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