OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • '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

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2016. All rights reserved.

  • 'The Conspicuous One out of Africa': The Feast of Saint Augustine on the Irish Calendars

    August 28 is the feast of the great Doctor of the Western Church, Saint Augustine. Not surprisingly, since he was himself a monastic of the Augustinian order, the twelfth-century Irish calendarist, Marianus O’Gorman, notes the feast on his Martyrology:

    28. b.
    Augustin ind eccna,epscop uasal amra. 

    Augustinus the wise,
    a noble, marvellous bishop.

    This Martyrology further records the octave day of the feast at September 4:

    4.b.
    D’ Augustin octauus, 

    The octave of Augustinus.

    The feast at August 28 is also recorded in the earlier Martyrology of Oengus:

    in t-airdirc a hAfraic. 

    (Augustine) the conspicuous one out of Africa.

    The scholiast notes comment:

    iin arrdraic a hAfraic .i. Augaistin .i. comad hé Augustin sapientissimus librorum sein.  L .i. Augustinus sapientissimus uir Affricorum. 

    the famous one out of Africa, i.e. Augustine, i.e. that may be Augustine sapientissimus librorum.- i.e. the wisest of the Africans.

    The Martyrology of Tallaght simply records 

    Augustini.
    episcopi. [in marg. magni.]

    In Irish popular devotion, Saint Augustine’s Day might be marked with a pattern day centred around a holy well, as for example at Kilshanny, County Clare. Augustinian monks founded a monastery here in 1189 and their patron seems to have displaced the native Irish saint to whom the well was originally dedicated.  There is a picture of the well here. Whilst, in this case, an earlier indigenous saint has been displaced, it needs to be remembered that in other cases the Augustinans were responsible for commissioning the Lives of the native holy men and women and for promoting their claims of association with religious foundations.