OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Hymns, Prayers and Poems

  • A Hymn in Honour of Saint Moninne

    July 6 is the Feast of Saint Moninne of Killeevy, one of three women saints along with Brigid and Bronagh important to the people of the historic kingdom of Oriel in south-east Ulster. She is also one of the handful of Irish female saints with an extant written Life. There are many fascinating aspects to Saint Moninne. One was her reputation for asceticism, the Life of Monenna preserved in the Codex Salamanticensis calling her ‘the daughter of John the Baptist and the prophet Elias’. Whilst asceticism was certainly a feature of the Early Irish Church, it is unusual to see a female saint being described in this way. The other was her ‘manly spirit’ for her female body is no barrier to Moninne’s wholehearted pursuit of the eremetical way of life. There is thus a distinct flavour of the desert spirituality of Saint Anthony the Great to the life of this County Armagh abbess. In addition to the Salamanca Life there is also a Vita Sanctae Monennae compiled by a tenth or eleventh-century Irish monk called Conchubranus. He takes Moninne out of her Irish hermitage and portrays her as a pilgrim to Rome and founder of  churches in England and Scotland. The twelfth-century Abbot Geoffrey of Burton was convinced that Conchubranus was writing about his own abbey’s founder and expanded the Irish monk’s text into The Life and Miracles of Saint Modwenna. There has been a great deal of research into Saint Moninne and fresh translations of her various Lives in recent years. Mario Esposito (1887-1975) first published the text of the Life by Conchubranus in 1910 and included two abcderarian hymns in honour of the saint as an appendix. As a tribute to Saint Moninne on this her feast day I reproduce the opening verse from the first hymn and the closing verse of the second:

    Deum deorum dominum,
    Autorem vite omnium,
    Regem et sponsum uirginum
    Sempiternum infinitum,
    Invocemus perualidum
    Sancte Monenne meritum,
    Ut nos ducat post obitum
    In regni refrigerium.

    Let us invoke God, Lord of gods,
    Creator of the life of all,
    King and spouse of virgins,
    everlasting, infinite,
    and the very strong
    merit of holy Monenna
    that she may guide us after death
    to the refreshing of the kingdom.

    Sancta Monenna,
    lux huius mundi ascendit,
    in candilabro nitidum sponsum
    sicut sol in meridie.
    Qui regnas in secula seculorum. Amen.

    The holy Monenna,
    light of this world,
    ascended to her shining spouse
    in a candelabrum like the midday sun.
    Who reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

    Mario Esposito,  Ymnus Sancte Monenne Virginis in Appendix to “Conchubrani Vita Sanctae Monennae.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 28 (1910), 202-51.

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  • An Irish Easter Legend.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    An Irish Easter Legend.

    Being in the north-west of Ireland last summer, on the borders of Sligo and Donegal, I chanced upon a famous Shanachie, or story-teller, an Irish-speaking peasant, who possessed an almost inexhaustible fund of traditional, historical, and legendary lore, and whose manner of relating his stories was so graphic that each scene seemed to pass before his own and his listeners’ eyes. Amongst the legends he told was one which is now very rare, being, as far as I am aware, known only to Irish-speaking people, and even to few amongst these, though the sculptured tomb bearing the pictured representation of the story being found in Kilree churchyard, almost in the extreme farthest part of Ireland from Donegal, would seem to show that in olden times the legend was popular throughout Ireland.

    The old story represented by “a cock in a pot, crowing,” was told me by the Shanachie as follows:

    “It was at the time when our Saviour was in the grave, and that the soldiers who were set to watch the tomb were sitting round a fire they had lighted. They had killed a cock and put it in a pot on the fire to boil for their supper; and, as they sat around, they spoke together of the story that was told how He that was in the tomb they were guarding had prophesied that before three days were passed He would rise again from the dead. And one of the men said, in mockery: He will rise as sure as the cock that is in that boiling pot will crow again.”

    No sooner were the words spoken than the lid of the pot burst open, the cock flew on to the edge, flapped his wings, sprinkling the soldiers with the boiling water, then crowed three times, and what he said each time was:

    ‘Moc an o-o-o-ye, slaun!
    Moc an o-o-o-ye, slaun!’

    That is,’ Son of the Virgin, Hail!’ [Mac an Oige, slan] and ever since that hour this is what the cock crows: this is what we hear him say, and if you listen you, too, can hear the very words:

    ‘ Moc an o-o-o-ye, slaun !’ ‘

    I spell the sound of the Irish phonetically to try and imitate the peculiar softening of the words as an Irish speaker softens them, the prolonging out of the o-o-o sounding almost precisely like the bird’s crow heard from a distance. At least so it has always sounded in my ears since I heard this beautiful legend. M. B.

    Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Volume 27 (1897), 193-194.

     

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  • A Blessing on Christ who has Suffered Cross and Martyrdom

     

    A blessing on Christ, son of the living God,
    who has suffered cross and martyrdom;
    who has atoned on the cross, on the rood,
    for the transgression of Adam and Eve.


    James Carney, ed. and trans., The Poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan – Together with the Irish Gospel of Thomas and a Poem on the Virgin Mary (Dublin, 1964).

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