OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

ALL THE SAINTS OF IRELAND

  • Muirgen The Mermaid Saint, January 27

    The entry in the Martyrology of Donegal at January 27 must rank as one of the strangest notices ever recorded of a holy woman:
    27. F. SEXTO KAL. FEBRUARII. 27
    MUIRGHEIN : i.e., a woman who was in the sea, whom the Books call Liban, daughter of Eochaidh, son of Muireadh ; she was about three hundred years under the sea, till the time of the saints, when Beoan the saint took her in a net, so that she was baptized, after having told her history and her adventures.
    The earlier calendar of Saint Oengus also records Muirgen on 27th January:
    F. vi. kl. My God loved Muirgen,
    A miraculous triumphant being ;
    They achieved bright victories in presence of kings
    Agna and Conx, virgins.
    and the holy virgin, Murgeilt, is commemorated at the vi. of the February Kalends, i.e. the 27th of January, in the Scottish Kalendar of Drummond.
    She also features in the Annals of the Four Masters:
    The Age of Christ, 558.
    In this year was taken the Mermaid, i.e. Liban, the daughter of Eochaidhn, son of Murieadh, on the strand of Ollarba, in the net of Beoan, son of Inli, the fisherman of Comghall of Beannchair.
    A footnote adds ‘Her capture as a mermaid is set down in the Annals of Ulster under the year 571: “Hic anno capta est in Muirgheilt”
    The legend of Muirgen is found in the Lebor na h-Uidri or Book of the Dun Cow. It tells the story of how the woman Liban was transformed into the saint Muirgen and establishes the setting as the north-eastern part of Ireland around what is now Larne, County Antrim:
    This Liban was the daughter of Eochaidh, from whom Loch Eathach, or Lough Neagh, was named, and who was drowned in its eruption [A. D. 90], together with all his children, except his daughter Liban, and his sons Conaing and Curnan. Liban, was preserved from the waters of Lough n-Eachach for a full year, in her grianan, [palace] under the lake. After this, at her own desire, she was changed into a salmon, and continued to traverse the seas till the time of St. Comhgall of Bangor. It happened that St. Comhgall dispatched Beoan, son of Innli, of Teach-Dabeoc, to Rome, on a message to Pope Gregory [Pope, A. D. 599-604], to receive order and rule. When the crew of Beoan’s currach were at sea, they heard the celebration of angels beneath the boat. Liban, thereupon, addressed them, and stated that she had been 300 years under the sea, adding that she would proceed westward and meet Beoan, that day twelvemonths, at Inbher-Ollarbha [Larne], whither the saints of Dalaradia, with Comhgall, were to resort. Beoan, on his return, related what had occurred, and, at the stated time, the nets were set, and Liban was caught in the net of Fergus of Miliuc; upon which she was brought to land, and crowds came to witness the sight, among whom was the Chief of Ui Conaing. The right to her being disputed by Comhgall, in whose territory,-and Fergus, in whose net,-and Beoan, in promise to whom,-she was taken, they prayed for a heavenly decision; and the next day two wild oxen came down from Carn-Airend; and on their being yoked to the chariot, on which she was placed, they bore her to Teach-Dabeoc, where she was baptized by Comhgall, with the name Muirgen i.e. Born of the sea, or Muirgeilt i.e. traverser of the sea. Another name for her was Fuinchi.
    Commenting on the presence of this ‘wild legend’ in the Annals, Irish Anglican Bishop, William Reeves, sought for a rational explanation:
    A seal, or or some such tenant of the sea, may have been caught in the nets of Comgall’s fisherman, and, as a “sancta Liban [Liban ‘maris mulier’]” flourished about the year 580 “sub magisterio S. Comgalli”, the following generation may have converted the seal into a liban, and St. Liban into a muirgelt (mermaid).
    Reeves also adds the interesting detail that belief in mermaids persisted in the County Antrim area in his own time:
    Nay, it is not twenty years since, in this age of light, a large company travelled all the way from Belfast to this neighbourhood, to see a mermaid which was reported to have been taken in Island Magee!
    This is presumably the same incident referred to here:
    In the same area [where Liban was captured] the Belfast Commercial reported the stranding of a mermaid in 1814 at Portmuck in Islandmagee, where hundreds of people flocked to see her. In his excellent book, The Fishermen of Dunseverick, James McQuilken recounts the sighting of a mermaid by the crew of one of Dunseverick’s fishing boats, while returning from their fishing grounds off Rathlin. One spring morning in the 1880s she was spotted on the rocks at Keardy’s Port. On landing the crew walked quickly to the rock, but she had disappeared. The cynical, of course, may blame the local seal population as the source of these apparitions.
    Canon O’Hanlon, while saying with a considerable degree of understatement that ‘we must receive only with great diffidence the various bardic accounts regarding Muirgen’, nevertheless, supplies a fitting ending to the story:
    ‘The romantic tale of her adventures concludes with a statement, that after her capture, the clerics gave her a choice to be baptized and go to heaven within an hour, or to wait three hundred years on earth, on condition of her afterwards attaining happiness. She chose to die that very hour. She seems to have been buried at Teach Dabeoc, on Lough Derg, in the county of Donegal. Miracles and wonders were there wrought through her. There, too, as God ordained for her in heaven, like every holy virgin, she was held in honour and reverence’.
    So, thus ends the curious tale of Muirgen, the mermaid who became a saint. Perhaps stories like this demonstrate a wish to literally baptize elements of Ireland’s pagan culture. It certainly is not the only example. O’Hanlon draws a parallel between Liban swimming the seas for 300 years until Saint Comghall arrives on the scene and the legend of Fionnuala, the daughter of Lir, who spent centuries in the form of a swan until the coming of Christianity set her free. Yet perhaps there was also a real holy woman called Muirgeilt, as the Drummond Kalendar says, whose story somehow became entwined with this legendary daughter of Lough Neagh.

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  • Saint Calbh of Tulach Carpait, January 26

    Some of the Irish calendars at January 26 commemorate St. Calb, or Calbh, of Tulach Carpait, now Tully-Corbet, County Monaghan. However, there are no other details given of this saint, apart from the locality in which he flourished. The entry in the Martyrology of Donegal reads:

    26. E. SEPTIMO KAL. FEBRUARII. 26.
    CRUIMTHER CALBH, of Tulach Carpait, in Ui-Meith-Macha.
    ERNIN, Bishop.
    Canon O’Hanlon reports that in addition:

    This saint is entered in the published Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 26th of January, under the designation of Bishop Calb, of Thilaigh Cairpat in Menna Tiri, in h. Meith. In the Franciscan copy of the Tallagh Martyrology, after the entry of thirteen foreign saints, the name of Bishop Calb first occurs, at this date. Likewise, under the head of Tulagh Carbuid, Duald Mac Firbis enters, Bishop Calbh, from Tulach-Carbaid, in Menna-tire, in Ui Meith, at January the 26th. This is all that seems to be known regarding him.

    Nothing else is known either of the Bishop Ernin, recorded with the name of Saint Calbh in the Martrology of Donegal. His name also appears in the Martyrology of Tallagh for today, but with no other details.
    The Feilire Oengusa does not record the name of any Irish saint for today, but does commemorate one of the great eastern martyrs of the church – Saint Polycarp. O’Hanlon quotes the translation of Professor O’Looney:—
    e. uii. kl. They are a powerful torch
    For the king to whom they came
    The host who were killed after privation
    With the passion of Polycarp.

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  • East Meets West – The Irish Saint Paul

     

    Canon O’Hanlon notes that the early Irish church celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul on January 25th:

    The Felire of St. Oengus contains no festival for an Irish saint at the 25th of January, as may be seen in the following Irish extract, and its English translation, furnished by Professor O’Looney; but, instead, it thus alludes to the conversion of St. Paul the Apostle:—

    D.uiii.kl.—Not insignificant the festival,
    A festival on which solemnity is made
    To Christ multitudes repaired
    Paul in the judgment of baptism.

    It also seems that because of this feastday, the great seventeenth-century hagiologist Father John Colgan decided to publish the Acts of Blessed Paul the Hermit at this date. It was claimed that this Irish Paul was one of the early disciples of Saint Patrick, converting, according to Colgan, around the year 442.

    His story, however, continues in the Voyage of Saint Brendan, when the intrepid sailors encounter a hermit straight out of the eastern tradition of the Desert Fathers. Saint Brendan has already forewarned his brethern on the approach to a small island, that they will see a ‘holy hermit, called Paul the Spiritual, who has dwelt there for sixty years without corporeal food, and who for twenty years previously received his food from a certain animal.’ Saint Brendan respectfully goes ashore first to seek permission to disembark his crew, who are in for some further surprises:

    When they came he gave each of them the kiss of peace, calling him by his proper name, at which they all marvelled much, because of the prophetic spirit thus shown. They also wondered at his dress, for he was covered all over from head to foot with the hair of his body, which was white as snow from old age, and no other garment had he save this.

    Saint Brendan protests his own unworthiness in the spiritual life when faced with this extreme ascetic witness:

    Woe is me, a poor sinner, who wear a monk’s habit, and who rule over many monks, when I here see a man of angelic condition, dwelling still in the flesh, yet unmolested by the vices of the flesh.’ On this, the man of God said: ‘Venerable father, what great and wonderful things has God shown to thee, which He has not revealed to our saintly predecessors! and yet, you say in your heart that you are not worthy to wear the habit of a monk; I say to you, that you are greater than any monk, for the monk is fed and clothed by the labour of his own hands, while God has fed and clothed you and all your brethren for seven years in His own mysterious ways; and I, wretch that I am, sit here upon this rock, without any covering, save the hair of my body.

    The hermit goes on to tell the visitors something of his earlier life and it is here that Saint Patrick makes a reappearance:

    For forty years I lived in the monastery of St Patrick, and had the care of the cemetery. One day when the prior had pointed out to me the place for the burial of a deceased brother, there appeared before me an old man, whom I knew not, who said: ‘Do not, brother, make the grave there, for that is the burial-place of another.’ I said’ ‘Who are you, father?’ ‘Do you not know me?’ said he. ‘Am I not your abbot?’ ‘St Patrick is my abbot,’ I said. ‘I am he,’ he said; ‘and yesterday I departed this life and this is my burial-place.’ He then pointed out to me another place, saying: ‘Here you will inter our deceased brother; but tell no one what I have said to you. Go down on to-morrow to the shore, and there you will find a boat that will bear you to that place where you shall await the day of your death.’ Next morning, in obedience to the directions of the abbot, I went to the place appointed, and found what he had promised. I entered the boat, and rowed along for three days and nights, and then I allowed the boat to drift whither the wind drove it. On the seventh day, this rock appeared, upon which I at once landed, and I pushed off the boat with my foot, that it may return whence it had come, when it cut through the waves in a rapid course to the land it had left.

    On the day of my arrival here, about the hour of none, a certain animal, walking on its hind legs, brought to me in its fore paws a fish for my dinner, and a bundle of dry brushwood to make a fire, and having set these before me, went away as it came. I struck fire with a flint and steel, and cooked the fish for my meal; and thus, for thirty years, the same provider brought every third day the same quantity of food, one fish at a time, so that I felt no want of food or of drink either; for, thanks to God, every Sunday there flowed from the rock water enough to slake my thirst and to wash myself.

    After those thirty years I discovered these two caves and this spring-well, on the waters of which I have lived for sixty years, without any other nourishment whatsoever. For ninety years, therefore, I have dwelt on this island, subsisting for thirty years of these on fish, and for sixty years on the water of this spring. I had already lived fifty years in my own country, so that all the years of my life are now one hundred and forty; and for what may remain, I have to await here in the flesh the day of my judgment.
    (Section 26 of the Voyage of Saint Brendan)

    Canon O’Hanlon remains politely unconvinced:

    Besides the legendary cast of this narrative, and a want of apparent connection between the Paul there named with the holy hermit who lived so long as a companion of St. Patrick; the period for extension of his life must preclude all reasonable probability, that the great apostle’s disciple could have survived and have borne the rigours of his isolated position until the time of St. Brendan’s supposed visit to him.

    An earlier writer, Father John Lanigan, who published a three-volume ecclesiastical history of Ireland in the 1820s, was rather more blunt:

    Colgan has (at 25 Jan.) what he calls the Acts of this Paul. The greater part of them is nothing else than a corrupt and ridiculous imitation of the history of St. Paul of Egypt, the first hermit; with this difference that, instead of a continental desert, the Irish Paul is made to pass his lonely days in a desert island.

    Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, vol. i., chap, ix., § xiii., n. 186, 495.

    The Life of Saint Paul of Thebes was written by Saint Jerome in the fourth century, and in it the eremetic ideal that Saint Paul embodies, by withdrawing to the desert and subsisting on the fruit of a palm tree and on bread supplied by a raven, is held up as superior to the ‘worldliness’ of other forms of monasticism.

    A more recent commentator suggests that there may thus have been another agenda underlying the encounter between Saint Brendan and the hermit:

    Paul the Hermit makes a surprise cameo appearance in the anonymous Navigatio Sancti Brendani; though in that work the hermit has been a disciple of Patrick and now subsists on nothing. Although shards of Jerome’s Latin remain, the author seems consciously to reverse Jerome’s message: Brendan complains that his life is nothing like the hermit’s, but Paul contradicts him, pronouncing Brendan’s particular care of his monastic familia to be the more blessed calling. It almost seems as if the author of the Navigatio were attempting to champion a native Irish community of monks over the eremetic ideal.

    Kevin Roddy, ‘Saint Paul of Thebes’ in P.G. Jestice, ed, Holy People of the World – a Cross-cultural Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2004), 679.

     

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