OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • Saint Maol Eóin, October 20

     

    A blog reader asked me recently about a saint Maol Eóin (Maeleoin, Mael Eoin) with a feast day on October 20. The martyrologies are the only source of information I could find about him and they provide some tantalizing clues, although the calendar entries are somewhat confusing. The Martyrology of Oengus ends its entry for the day with: 

    the fair sun at that mountain, 
    of those splendid Children of Eogan

    but the late twelfth-century Martyrology of Gorman hails:

    Mael Eoin of the beauty,
    with splendid Aedán
    A scholiast note records that Mael Eoin was:

    a bishop and an anchorite.

    The seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal in its entries for October 20 leads with:

    Maeleoin, Bishop and Anchorite,

    I found these calendar entries difficult to decipher. The name of Maol Eóin does not appear on the Martyrology of Tallaght, but could he be one of the unnamed ‘Children of Eogan’ i.e. a descendant of Eoghan, (perhaps a reference to the founder ancestor of the Eóganachta) recorded in the Martyrology of Oengus?  Saint Marianus O’Gorman not only names Saint Maol Eóin but appears to link him with the equally obscure Aedán. It is to the later, anonymous scholiast on the Martyrology of Gorman that we owe the information that Saint Maol Eóin was a bishop and anchorite, but where and when he held these offices we don’t know. A wide variety of ecclesiastical offices are described in the Irish annals and it is not uncommon for a bishop to be described as the holder of an additional title. Nuadu, for example, a ninth-century Bishop of Armagh, was also described as bishop and anchorite, something I discussed in an earlier post here.

    Canon O’Hanlon references the later calendars in his brief account of Saint Maol Eóin in Volume X of his Lives of the Irish Saints:

    ARTICLE V. ST. MAELEOIN, BISHOP AND ANCHORITE. 

    At this date, Marianus O’Gorman has inserted in his Martyrology the feast of Mael Eoin “of the beauty,” and the scholiast states he was a bishop and an anchorite. To what particular See he be longed has not transpired, neither can we find the period when he flourished. The name of Maeleoin, Bishop and Anchorite, occurs also in the Martyrology of Donegal, at the 20th of October. The Bollandists repeat these notices, at this day.

     Thus, sadly, it seems that Saint Maol Eóin is one of the many Irish saints shrouded in obscurity, with only the Martyrology of Gorman offering any clue as to his identity.

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  • An Old Irish Prayer

    When I saw a 1912 article entitled ‘An Old Irish prayer’  in the The Sacred Heart Review I was expecting to find an early medieval text, but instead found the familiar bedtime prayer, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’, known to generations of children but not, as far as I was aware, one with any particular Irish associations. But the anonymous writer claims that this prayer originated in Ireland, at ‘the golden time when Eire was Eirie’ no less. I haven’t myself come across the ‘wilder surmises’ linking Saints Patrick, Colum Cille and Aidan with the spread of the prayer, but its survival is attributed to ‘those conservators of tradition, the Irish peasants’. Having argued for the prayer’s Irish roots we suddenly find ourselves at the court of the Norman king William Rufus, where a pious child recites the prayer as the wicked monarch lies ill. The author ends by giving us a modern English version followed by an alleged ‘ancient Irish’ version. I suspect that this prayer is part of a later medieval European-wide tradition in which Ireland was represented, but was not the original source. The collection of traditional prayers by An t-Athair Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire S.J., Ár bPaidreacha Dúchais, includes an Irish language version, as does the Abhráin diadha chúige Connacht, of Douglas Hyde. So, I will append one of the Irish versions (with updated modern spelling) from Hyde’s 1906 Religious Songs of Connacht, along with his literal and poetic translations:

    An Old Irish Prayer.

    The universal night prayer of the children, beginning “Now I lay me down to sleep ” is only one thousand years older than Protestantism, although many of the misinformed appear to believe that it is of Protestant origin, says the Dublin Irish Catholic. The old, old Catholic prayer runs back to the golden time when Eire was Eirie, and there have been wilder surmises than this: that St. Patrick taught it to the children of the High King at Tara, that St. Columbkille bore it to Iona, and that St. Aidan carried it from Iona to England when he founded Lindisfarne Abbey. In one form or other the little prayer has descended through the ages from mother to child among those conservators of tradition, the Irish peasants. In the days of that precursor of Henry VIII the irreligious, dissolute William Rufus -that is to say, in the eleventh century— the old baby prayer was suddenly presented at Court. It was at a time when the corrupt monarch lay dangerously ill. He had banished St. Anselm and Anselm’s clergy, and in the hour of mortal need he was without spiritual help. Trembling for the salvation of his soul, he commanded his ungodly courtiers to kneel and pray for him. They knelt and muttered some jargon. The king would not be satisfied: he ordered them to pray audibly. But these, his chosen friends and flatterers, were of his own impious stripe; not one of them could say an intelligent prayer. At last they bethought them of a little page who had but lately come to Court, and who had been observed and mocked at his night prayers. The child was brought to the king’s bedside; he knelt and prayed:—

    Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
    Bless the bed that I lie on.
    There be four corners on my bed;
    There be four angels overspread;
    Two at my head, two at my feet,
    To be my guardians while I sleep —
    And if I die before I wake,
    Sweet Mary’s Son, my soul pray take.

    The modern English form is very much shorter: —

    Now I lay me down to sleep;
    I pray Thee,
    Lord, my soul to keep,
    If I should die before I wake,
    I pray Thee, Lord,
    my soul to take.
    Amen.

    One ancient Irish version runs thus: —

    Or ere I go this night to sleep.
    I give my Lord my soul to keep.
    There are four corners to my bed;
    Four angels round about my head—
    Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
    God bless the bed I rest upon.
    And if I die ere I awake,
    I give my Lord my soul to take.
    Amen.

    The Sacred Heart Review, Volume 47, Number 14, 23 March 1912.

    Ceithre Phosta ar mo Leaba.

    Ceithre Phosta ar mo Leaba,
    Ceithre aingeal orthu scartha
    Mathú, Marcas, Lúc a’s Seán
    Agus Dia do mo chumhdach arís go lá.

    FOUR POSTS. 

    Four posts around my bed,
    Four angels have it spread,
    Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John,
    Keep me, O God, till the day shall dawn.

    Literally. —
    Four posts on my bed
    four angels on my spreading (?)
    Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John
    And God keep me again till day.
    I have heard an English verse very like this. It ran thus if I remember right—”Four corners to my bed
    four angels round it spread
    Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John
    bless the bed that I lie on.”

    Douglas Hyde, Abhráin diadha chúige Connacht, Religious Songs of Connacht II,  (London and Dublin, 1906), 216-7.

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  • Saint Lapán of Little Island

    My research into the Irish saints for this blog normally involves referencing the historic Irish martyrologies which record their feast days. Yet I am becoming increasingly aware of those saints whose feast days are either entirely unrecorded or are uncertain. An enigmatic holy man from Cork, Lapán of Little Island, might be numbered among them. Little Island is situated in the tidal part of the River Lee, roughly half-way between Cork and Cobh. Lapán (Lappan, Loppán, lat. Lappanus) is a name shared by a number of Irish saints. Pádraig Ó Riain feels that it ‘probably represents a hypocoristic form of Labhraidh, ‘he [who] speaks”.’ Alas, none of them have spoken clearly to us across the centuries. There are three Lapáns commemorated on the Irish martyrologies, on February 11 we find Lapán, son of Ciarán; on March 26 a Lapán without any further identifier; and at November 3  Lapán of Cluian Aithghin, a place which Ó Riain suggests could be Clonatin in Kilmakilloge parish in Wexford.  Curiously, Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints makes no mention of the Lapán found on March 26, but Evelyn Bolster, author of a diocesan history of Cork identifies Saint Lapán of Little Island with the saint commemorated on that day. In a footnote to the union of parishes called Glounthane, she writes:

    GLOUTHANE is a union embracing the ancient parishes of Caherlag, Little Island* Ballydeloher, Killaspugmullane and Kilquane…..

    *Little Island, so called in contradistinction to the Great Island or the Cobh of Cork. Names by which Little Island has appeared in the various records are: Cellescop Lappan (from Saint Lappan whose feast occurs on 26 March); De Insula; Ecclesia Sancta Lappani de Insula Parva; Ecclesia Sancta Lappani de Inysmemele; Sancta Lappani de insula parve als inish vic Neyl. Mac Neill was a chieftain of the Uí Tassaigh who inhabited this district.

    E. Bolster, A History of the Diocese of Cork: From the Earliest Times to the Reformation (Irish University Press, 1972), p.282.

    I only wish the author had given the grounds on which this identification was made, as the martyrologies do not make reference to the location or to any other identifiers of the saint commemorated on this day. The Martyrology of Tallaght simply lists the name of Lapán on March 26, whilst his name is not found among the entries for the day in the Martyrology of Oengus. Turning to the later calendars of the saints, the twelfth-century Martyrology of Gorman records ‘very holy Loppán’ and the seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal notes Lappan as the final name in the list of saints commemorated, again without reference to a place or other information which may have helped us to identify this saint with the bishop of Little Island.

    Earlier diocesan historian, Canon Patrick Power, writing on the parish of Little Island in a 1921 paper noted:

    Three Lappans are enumerated in the Irish Martyrologies, but which, if any, of these is our Lappan of the Island we have nothing to indicate.

    Rev. P. Power,  Place-Names and Antiquities of S.E. County Cork. Barony of Barrymore. Part III. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, 36, (1921) 164–205 at p. 184.

    Canon O’Hanlon, in Volume III of his Lives of the Irish Saints also did not make a link between the Saint Lapán of March 26 and the Cork Bishop of Little Island:

    ARTICLE V.—St. LAPPAN, OR LAPPANUS.

    A record is found, in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 26th of March, regarding a St. Lappan. The Bollandists notice him, at the same date, as Lappanus. Again, Lappan is set down, in the Martyrology of Donegal, as having a festival, at this date, but without any relation to a locality.

    It seems, therefore, that Saint Lapán is one of many Irish saints whose memory lives on in the place name of his church, but about whom no historical information has survived. There seems to be nothing in the calendar entries to confirm Bolster’s contention that the saint commemorated on March 26 is Lapán of Little Island and her footnote is the only source I have been able to find for this claim. If anyone knows of any further sources I would be most interested to hear of them.

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