OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Irish Saints

  • The Larks of Glendalough

     

    June 3 is the feast of Saint Kevin of Glendalough, a saint in whom there has been a revival of interest in recent decades thanks to his status as a poster boy for ‘Celtic Christianity’. This movement claims that our native saints were especially in tune with the natural environment and as a result enjoyed a special relationship with the animal creation. And no anthology of ‘Celtic Christianity’ is complete without a reference to one of the most famous episodes from Saint Kevin’s hagiography – the sheltering of a nesting bird in his outstretched, praying hands until her young have fledged. It is a theme which has also inspired poets (including the late Seamus Heaney), and below is a 1905 example, The Larks of Glendalough, by Thomas Walsh. It is striking that Walsh has chosen the lark here for most retellings of this tale, which originated in the History and Topography of Ireland by the twelfth-century chronicler, Gerald of Wales, identify the avian as a blackbird. I am left wondering therefore if Walsh has conflated the story of the blackbird which nests in Saint Kevin’s palm with another legend of Glendalough which seeks to explain why the song of the lark is never heard over the site. This lark legend is bound up with the construction of the Seven Churches of Glendalough and here it is as told to a mid-nineteenth-century traveller to Ireland by his guide, a Mr. Winder:

    Among the portentous events that my friend Mr. Winder told me was this,— that for 1,300 years the skylark had never been heard to warble over the lake, because St. Kevin prayed that it might never have the power to do so; and the reason was, that the men who were building the city where the Seven Churches stand had made a vow to commence their work each day as soon as the lark rose, and not to leave off till the sun had set. They kept their vow, and were in consequence so worn out with fatigue, that many of them died; when St. Kevin, out of compassion, offered up his prayers that no lark should henceforth rise into the air — the prayer was granted, and ‘the plague was stayed.’ All this is firmly believed. Subsequent to this, a man, who was driving me in a jaunting-car, told me that it was as true as we were sitting in the car that the skylark was never heard to warble over the lake for 1,300 years, though it was heard commonly outside the Seven Churches, at the distance of a few hundred yards. I asked him, if he did not think that skylarks preferred warbling over cornfields rather than over lakes?”

              The tourist’s illustrated hand-book for Ireland, (London, 1854), 42. 

    The lark legend thus seems quite distinct from that of Saint Kevin and the Blackbird. I have not been able to find out any more about our poet Thomas Walsh but, whether or not he has confused his Glendalough bird legends here, his poem at least has the merit of depicting Saint Kevin as someone engaged in the monastic life. Indeed, Walsh seems to be describing Saint Kevin using the ancient prayer posture known as crois-fhigill, cross-vigil, where the arms are outspread in imitation of Christ’s position on the cross. Overall, although it is typical of the sentimental verse published in the popular religious press of this time, I find The Larks of Glendalough charming:
     
    The Larks of Glendalough
    By Thomas Walsh

    All night the gentle saint had prayed,
    And, heedless of the thrush and dove,
    His radiant spirit still delayed
    To hear the seraph choirs above.

    So still he knelt — his arms outspread,
    His head thrown backward from his breast —
    A lark across the casement sped,
    And in his fingers built its nest.

    The angel music from his soul
    Receded with the flood of day;
    Through Glendalough the sunlight stole
    And brushed the mists and dews away.

    ’Twas then the saint beheld the bird
    Serenely nesting in his hand,
    And murmured, “Ah, if thou hadst heard
    The matins in that seraph land!”

    Then, soft again he turned to pray;
    Nor moved his arm at even close
    Or matin call from day to day
    Until their nestling voices rose.

    And when his loving task was done,
    Above his cell he heard them cry: —
    “O Kevin, Kevin! Gentle one !
    We bear to heaven thy soul’s reply!”

    The Rosary Magazine, Volume 26, (January-June 1905), 18.

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  • Saint Colmán Lobhar of Moynoe, May 21

     

    On May 21 we find the feast of Saint Colmán, one of a number of Irish saints to be described as lobhar, a ‘leper’. The name Colmán is derived from Colum and along with a bewildering number of other variants is one of the most commonly found names on the Irish calendars of the saints. Our foremost modern hagiologist, Pádraig Ó Riain, has argued that many of these saints represent local manifestations of the cult of the most famous Colum of them all – Saint Colum Cille (Columba). Saint Colmán Lobhar of Moynoe, County Clare, might fit this theory. Canon O’Hanlon in Volume V of his Lives of the Irish Saints lists the evidence from the calendars and offers some observations on the nature of the ‘leprosy’ associated with our saint:

    Article VII. St. Colman, Lobhar, or the Leper, of Magh-n-ec- or Moyne, County of Clare

    In the”Feilire”of St.Aengus, the festival of “zealous Colman, a leper,” is mentioned at this date;’ and, therefore we may infer, that he flourished, at an early period, in the Irish church. His office is not known. The Martyrology of Tallagh registers this name, at the 21st of May. His place is called Maighe Eo. The Bollandists have a festival for Colmanus leprosus de Magh-eo, on the same authority; but, as they allege, little more can they find regarding him, except that Colgan refers Colmanus Lobhar and his feast to this date. Muighe-Eo—which was in Dal-Cais—must be distinguished from Mayo, in Connaught. Its fuller denomination was Maigh-neo-Norbhraighe, now known as Moynoe, or Mayno, an old church, which gives name to a parish, on the margin of Lough Derg, in the barony of Upper Tulla, and county of Clare. A church at this place had been burned by the Conmaicni, in 1084. This church is mentioned, also, in the Caithreim Toirdheal-bhaigh, or “Wars of Thomond,” at the year 1318, as the hereditary termon of the Ui-Bloid. This day veneration was paid to Colman, Lobhar, or the Leper, of Magh-n-eo, in Dal-glais, as we find entered,in the Martyrology of Donegal. It  seems not improbable, that some of our saints, called Lepers, had not been afflicted with the same form of disease, known as leprosy, in certain countries at the present time; and, it is likely enough, that their malady was some form of erysipelas, or of a skin distemper, corresponding with the bodily infirmity to which allusion has been made.

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  • Saint Connachtach of Iona, May 10

    May 10 is the feast of Saint Connachtach, an 8th/9th century abbot of Iona. This successor to Saint Colum Cille enjoyed a particular reputation as a scriba selectissimus, a scribe most choice, but the evidence from the Annals suggests that his tenure as abbot was of short duration and set against a backdrop of Viking attacks. Cowley Father, the Rev. Edward Craig Trenholme, gave a summary of the careers of the abbots of Iona in his 1909 guide to the historic monastery. He begins his listing of those in the ninth century with our saint:  

    THE NINTH CENTURY.

    18. Connachtach (801-802), “a scribe most choice and abbot of Ia”, had a short and troubled term of office. It must have been in quieter times and a lower station that he attained to fame as a “scriba selectissimus.” Some marvellous manuscripts of the Irish monastic scribes survive to show what Connachtach’s title implies. But alas! for such peaceful arts and Iona’s stores of precious writings in the calamitous ninth century. The Danish attack on the monastery in 795 proved the preliminary of a long period of terror, blood, and fire, in which Iona won the glory of “red martyrdom,” but lost well-nigh all else. In Connachtach’s first year the monastery was burned by the “Gentiles,” and the Abbot died next year. The ravagers returned again and again, as we shall see, but after each successive attack the love and veneration of the monks of Iona for their home forced them to re-establish themselves there at all perils.

    Rev. E. C. Trenholme, The Story of Iona, (Edinburgh, 1909), 67.

    Canon O’Hanlon in his account of Abbot Connachtach gives him the alternative name of Cormac and suggests that he may have met his death at the hands of the Viking raiders:

    Article III. Cormac or Connachtach, Abbot of Iona.
    [Eighth and Ninth Centuries.]  
    On the authority of the Martyrology of Tallagh, which enters Cormac at the 10th of May, Colgan assigns to this day, the festival of the present holy man. This authority is followed, likewise, by the Bollandists, who remark on the number of Irish Saints so called, as enumerated by Colgan, when treating about several bearing that name. Connachtach—a name substituted for Cormac—is said to have been a select scribe, and he became Abbot of Iona, most probably, after the demise of Bersal Mac Seghine, which is given, at the year 801, having been incumbent for thirty-one years. Connachtach followed his predecessor to the tomb, after a very short term of rule. He died according to some accounts, in 797—but recte 802—assuming the corrected chronology found, in Dr. O’Donovan’s Annals of the Four Masters. The cause assigned for Connachtach’s death, is not recorded; but as Hy-Columcille was burned by the Gentiles, A.D. 802, it is probable enough, that our Abbot met with a violent death, at their hands, having perished during the calamity inflicted on his religious community.

    Some modern writers have suggested that Abbot Connachtach’s reputation as an eminent scribe makes him a possible candidate for involvement in the creation of the Book of Kells, traditionally believed to have been produced at Iona. In a lecture of 2011 Arne Kruse argued:

    The organisation of what was tremendous artistic activity on Iona sometime in the second half of the eighth century would have been an economic and logistical challenge. The effort must have been conducted by an inspired leader with extraordinary managerial and artistic skills. The one in charge would have been the scribnidh or scribe of the community, an office which carried equal importance to that of the abbot. The scribe behind the tribute in copper, stone and vellum is anonymous. However, if it is correct that the intense artistic activity may have taken place toward the end of the eighth century, there is a chance that the mastermind could have been Connachtach, ‘an eminent scribe and abbot of Ia’, who, according to the Annals of Ulster, died in 802, possibly during the Viking raid that very year. It is rare to hear of scribes in the annals, and the mention of Connachtach could be because he was murdered, although the murder itself is not mentioned. On the other hand, it can also be that Connachtach was such an extraordinarily brilliant scholar, artist and coordinator that his death merited a note.

    Arne Kruse, ‘Columba and Jonah – a motif in the dispersed art of Iona’, Northern Studies, vol. 45, (2013), 18.

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