OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • Saint Gema of Riacc Innse, September 18

    The name of an obscure Irish female saint is found in some of the Irish calendars at September 18. As Canon O’Hanlon explains below, the name of Gema of Riacc Innse is found in the Martyrology of Tallaght and in the Martyrology of Gorman. Her name is absent though from the Martyrology of Oengus and from the Martyrology of Donegal:

    St. Gema, Virgin, of Riacc Innse. 

    We find a festival registered in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 18th of September, in honour of Gema, Virgin, of Riacc Innse.  In the Martyrology of Marianus O’Gorman, at the same date, the entry of Gemma is found. Her place and period seem to be unknown.
    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2017. All rights reserved.

  • 'His Cross is our saving herb…'

    September 14 is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and to mark the feast below is a short excerpt from an Irish bardic poem translated by Irish Jesuit, Father Lambert Mc Kenna (1870-1956):

    His Cross is our saving herb, our flower of blessing, our bond of perfect peace; it is the daily protection of Eve’s race, the seal of our covenant, the roof above us.
    L. McKenna, Some Irish Bardic Poems, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review Vol. 24, No. 94 (June 1935), pp. 313-318.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2017. All rights reserved.

  • Saint Fiachra and Kilfera by the Nore

    August 30 is the feast of Saint Fiachre of Brieul. In the 1904 poem below, Alice Esmonde suggests that even in his French exile Saint Fiachra never quite forgets another quiet hermitage – that of Kilfera by the Nore in Ireland. The poem is typical of the many which were published on native saints in popular Catholic magazines in Ireland at this time, it is not great literature just a sentimentally naive tribute to the holy man:

    Saint Fiacre

    On a slope beside the Norey
    St. Fiacre built his cell,
    Raised his Church and by the door
    Found and blessed his holy well.
    In the summer near the gloaming,
    Should your footsteps there go roaming,
    You would think that down he passes,
    While a hush comes, in the air,
    Yon could hear the tender grasses
    Rustling as he knelt in prayer,
    For he lived in days of yore
    At Kilfera by the Nore.

    Still the spot is calm and fair,
    Tho’ decayed is his sweet cell,
    And he’s half forgotten there,
    By the banks he loved so well.
    But the faithful river stealing,
    When the years brought men less feeling,
    By the Hermitage once holy,
    ‘Mid a silence most profound,
    Seems to sigh and whisper slowly.
    All around is sacred ground —
    For Fiacre years before
    Blessed Kilfera by the Nore.

    Did he hold the place so dear
    That the Lord who watched above
    Filled his heart with tender fear,
    Exiled him with jealous love?
    Solitude he sought more lasting,
    Calmer days for prayer and fasting,
    And across the parting ocean,
    At Breuil in alien land,
    He, with tears and deep emotion,
    Built a cell with his own hand:
    Still he loved as years before
    Lone Kilfera by the Nore.

    Sorrows came and centuries,
    But his Irish heart has rest
    At Breuil beside the trees,
    And the flowers he once loved best—
    Till the Angel’s trumpet calls him,
    While the joy of Heaven enthralls him,
    Where a thousand years go faster
    Than the moments of a day,
    In the Presence of the Master
    Who has wiped all tears away.
    Still we hope he watches o’er
    Calm Kilfera by the Nore.

    Alice Esmonde

    The Irish Monthly, Volume 32 (1904),662-3

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