OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • 'A Queen of the Race of David'- An Irish Poem on the Virgin Mary

    Pictorial Lives of the Saints (1878)

    November 21 is the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The sources for this episode in the life of the Mother of God are found in the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, which tells us that the parents of Our Blessed Lady presented her for service in the Temple when she was three years old. There she remained until puberty when her marriage was arranged. I was pleased to find an eighth-century Irish poem which reflects this tradition included with Professor James Carney’s translations of the poems of Blathmac and the Irish Gospel of Thomas. He says in his introduction:

    The poem to the Virgin Mary .. would appear to be of the same date as the Irish Gospel of Thomas, and is simply an effort to assure us that the Blessed Virgin was of noble lineage. The poet was familiar with the view that Mary before her marriage to Joseph was one of the virgins serving in the Temple at Jerusalem. This idea is as old as the Book of James or Protoevangelium which is assigned to the second century.
    It is interesting to see that these apocryphal sources were known to the Early Irish Church. I imagine that establishing the ancestral background of the Blessed Virgin would have struck a chord with the Irish writer, given that Ireland’s own tribal society took a keen interest in matters genealogical. The poem begins with a clear statement of the tradition that the Mother of God spent her childhood in service reading the Law and the Prophets as a preparation for her great role in salvation history.
    III. A Poem on the Virgin Mary
    1. Mary is the mother of the little boy who was born on Christmas night: she read the Prophets and the Law until she was experienced in service.
    2. The woman was not unstable, the holy maiden was sage; she conceived with steadfastness and glory the well of divine wisdom.
    3. Hail to you! whatever may come, O blessed amongst women. Hail! You will receive in your womb a being called Jesus.
    4. A being who has been born before worlds, who has given life to the dead; there is not apparent – though it is clear that it is not falsehood – in the Vetus or the Nouum a being like him.
    5. The mother who has borne the boy is without doubt ever-virgin; when the place from which she comes is known numerous are her kinsfolk.
    6. Of 1 the people who sacrificed the Lamb who were in the city of Zion , of the posterity of Noah and Shem: it is Jerusalem.
    7. A maiden of the seeds of the kings, a queen of the race of David; it was no low-class kin in addition to that; the maiden was of the tribe of Juda.
    8. The woman was a daughter of Israel, the maiden was of noble race. Mary is the name of the woman who conceived in Bethlehem of Juda.
    1= ‘She (Mary) is of…’
    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), xviii; 108-111.

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  • Saint Foelchu of Finglas, September 24

    A County Dublin saint, Foelchu of Finglas, is among the Irish saints commemorated on the Irish calendars at September 24, as Canon O’Hanlon records:

    St. Foelchu, of Finglas, County of Dublin.

    Colgan tells us, that among those Saints, who were buried and venerated at Finglas, in the Dublin diocese, may be found a St. Foelchu. The time when he flourished is not known, but it seems to have been remote. His name, place, and feast are solely entered in our calendars. A festival in honour of Failchon of Fionughlass, is set down in the manuscript and published Martyrology of Tallaght. The place where he was venerated, is now a village, about two miles north-east from the present City of Dublin, and in the county of the same name. The foundations of a much older church than the present ruined one are yet traceable around the exterior of its chancel… The feast of Faelchu occurs on the 24th of September, according to the Martyrology of Marianus O’Gorman. His commentator adds, that he was of Fionnghlaisi or Findglas. In the Martyrology of Donegal, his feast is entered, at the 24th of September.

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  • Saint Mirren of Paisley, September 15

    On September 15 we commemorate an Irish saint who began his career at the monastery of Bangor under the tutelage of its founder, Saint Comgall, but is today remembered as patron of Paisley in Scotland. Canon O’Hanlon, in the September volume of his Lives of the Irish Saints, begins the entries for this day with an account of Saint Mirren (Merinus, Meadhran, Mirin, Mirrin, Mirren), but below is the account from Bishop Forbes’ work on the Scottish calendars which quotes from the lessons of Saint Merin’s feast from The Breviary of Aberdeen:

    The acts of S. Merinus, in the Breviary of Aberdeen, are very circumstantial. Bishop Merinus was given by his parents to S. Comgal, to be trained in the monastery of Bangor, where he eventually assumed the monastic habit and became prior. His rule was a gentle one. Once, when Finnian of Movilla came to the monastery in the absence of S. Comgal, and asked for milk, of which there was none, the cellarer, at the bidding of S. Merinus, was told to bring some from the cellar, which was accordingly done, and distributed among them that sat at meat. He laid the pains of childbirth on an Irish King who contemned him. He was seen by one of the community in his cell, on one occasion, to be surrounded by a heavenly light, and on another occasion he recalled to life one of the brethren who had fallen down overcome by thirst and fatigue in the valley of Colpdasch. At length, full of miracles and holiness, he slept in the Lord at Pasley, and in his honour the said church is dedicated to God.—(Brev. Aberd. pars estiv. fol. cvi.)

    That a colony from Bangor should come to Paisley is not at all improbable. In the life of S. Kieran, at March 5, in Colgan’s Acta SS. Hib. (p. 461), there is a notice of a S. Medranus, who is mentioned in the lost Kalendar of Cashel with a S. Tomanus:—”SS. Medranus et Tomanus in una ecclesia in Britannica Arcluidensi.”—(Ibid. p. 465 a, note 31.) Paisley is within easy distance of Dumbarton. Colpdasch has not been identified.

    Camerarius, who makes his day the 17th, states that he was Abbot of Newbattle, in the Lothians. This is impossible, but we find traces of him —
    1. In the parish of Kelton, in Kirkcudbright. “There is in the south-east boundary of the parish the vestige of an ancient chapel and churchyard, called Kirk Mirren, now entirely neglected, and of which nothing is known but the locality and the name.”—(N. S. A., Kirkcudbright, p. 170; O. S. A. viii. p. 297.)
    2. In the parish of Kilmarouock, a chapel, still known as S. Mirren’s Chapel (marking by the name of its patron saint some old connection with the abbey of Paisley), stands now in ruins upon Inch Murryn, the largest island of Lochlomond.—(Orig. Par. i. p. 35.)
    3. At Kilsyth there is a remarkable spring, on the south of Woodend, called S. Mirrin’s Well.—(Orig. Par. i. p. 43.)
    4. In the parish of Coylton is a farm called Knock Murran.—(N. S. A., Ayr, p. 656.)
    5. In the parish of Edzell, on the south side of the Korth Esk, is the burn of Murran, but there are no distinct traces of his memory anywhere on the east coast of Scotland.
    Alexander Penrose Forbes, D.C.L. Bishop of Brechin, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, (1872), 397-398.

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