November 6 is the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland but is also the day on which we commemorate a little-known female saint of County Fermanagh, Saint Feber (Feadhbhair, Feadhbar, Fedbair, Febor, Faber) of Boho. Since we have only four surviving written Lives of Irish women saints, stories of Saint Feber have mostly survived in popular tradition preserved in the place where she once flourished. Her name is recorded though in Irish genealogical sources and also on the calendars of the saints. The Martyrology of Gorman records the name ‘Fedbair’ at November 6 with an accompanying scholiast note describing her as ‘a virgin from Botha Eich Raichnig’. The Martyrology of Donegal replicates this with its entry for ‘Fedbair, Virgin of Botha-eich Uaichnich, in Tir-Rátha’. Pádraig Ó Riain in his Dictionary of Irish Saints tells us that the genealogies describe Feber as a daughter of Dallbhrónach, mother of a number of saints. Her family tree also makes Saint Feber an aunt to Saint Brigid of Kildare. and Ó Riain notes that Feber was ‘said to have been subject to Brighid at her church in the townland of Toneel, parish of Boho, which she shared with her sister Sanct Bhróg.’ However, it is to popular tradition that we must turn for further details of the establishment of a church by Saint Feber. Here we find some classic hagiographical tropes: the assistance of a wild animal and the righteous anger of the saint leading to the cursing of a river and its subsequent flowing against the hill.
In a letter dated November 6, 1834, John O’Donovan of the Ordnance Survey wrote:
The village of Monea is called in Irish Muine Fhiadh, i.e. Hill of the Deer. The name is accounted for by a story similar to those told to account for the names of old churches in Derry. The virgin St. Feber first attempted to build her church at Kildrum at the place where the holy well now called Tobar Feber is to be seen, but what had been built in the course of the day was destroyed in the night by some invisible being. At last a deer, blessed beast, was pleased to point out a site where Feber might erect her church without interruption. He carried Feber’s books on his horns to Monea, and there the holy virgin finished the erection of her church without annoyance. But when the deer was crossing the Sillees River (Abhainn na Sailíse) he slipped on its slippery banks and the books fell off his horns and it was sometime before he could fix them on again. This was effected by the genius or sheaver (shaver) who presided over the Sillees, who did all in his power to prevent the establishment of the Christian Religion in that neighbourhood. As soon as Feber had understood that the demon of the river thus annoyed the good beast, she was filled with holy indignation -she became much wroth – and with (in?) sanctified fury and heavenly anger, she cursed the River, praying that the Silleece might be cursed with sterility of fish and fertility in the destruction of human life, and that it might run against the hill.
Rev. M. O’Flanagan, Letters Containing Information Relative to the Antiquities of the County of Fermanagh: Collected During the Progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1834-5 (1928), 54-5.
A more recent commentator suggests that O’Donovan’s version of the Saint Feber, the stag and the river story was not the only one. Henry Glassie points out:
In O’Donovan’s telling, Saint Febor’s opponent was supernatural, more often her opponent is human – a local chief – but her three curses end most tellings.
He then goes on to give us the version from the autobiography of William K. Parke, a native of Derrygonnelly, County Fermanagh. Derrygonnelly is a town on the Sillees River, whose flowing against the hill Parke explains by telling the story of
“a lady saint known as Saint Faber”, who roamed the area with her pet deer, “endeavouring to convert the locals to Christianity”. Her main objective was the local chief, O’Phelan, who “wanted nothing to do with this new fangled religion”. He ordered his servants to release the dogs on her. She fled, attempted to leap the Sillees, failed, her holy books were destroyed, and she cursed the river. The curses were that the river was to be dangerous for bathers, bad for fishing and to flow for ever against the hill.
Glassie also cited another version of the tale from the same author. The quote above was taken from Parke’s 1988 autobiography Fermanagh Childhood , but in Glimpses of Old Derrygonnelly, published a decade earlier, Parke quoted from an old article from the local newspaper, The Impartial Reporter:
“St Faber fleeing from her enemies raised her staff cursing the water to be turned back so that she could save her deer carrying the Holy Books. The river ran on as far as Lisgoole Abbey where the monks met it and turned it into Lough Erne”.
Henry Glassie, The Stars of Ballymenone, new edition, (Indiana University Press, 2016), footnote, p.483.
The three curses of Saint Feber are part of a tradition of saintly malediction found in medieval hagiography in general, but a feature of the Lives of Irish saints in particular. I spoke about the context in which our saints utter curses on Episode 30 of the radio programme All the Saints of Ireland, which you can find at the podcast library of Radio Maria Ireland here. As I explained, cursing usually arises as a response to the dignity of the saint being disrespected. That is clearly the case here, where the chieftain aggressively attempts to thwart the saint’s missionary work and she invokes the judgement of God, not against the man, but against the river which endangered her animal companion and the holy books he carried. As I remarked on the radio broadcast, the cursing of things, food-producing sources such as rivers or trees, may owe something to the cursing of the fig tree by Christ on his way to Jerusalem. There is thus nothing unusual in this episode of Saint Feber and the Sillees, we see instances in other saints Lives of the cursing of rivers so that fish will not be caught. It’s also true that unusual natural features in the environment are often attributed to the actions of saints, in this case the flowing of the Sillees against the hill. It is worth noting, however, that cursing is predominantly a male preserve in the Lives of the Irish saints but Saint Feber seems every bit as capable as any male saint. In the newspaper account the raising of her staff, the symbol of her authority, to pronounce the curse is also in keeping and reflects the ritualistic aspect of uttering maledictions.
A final observation is that the saint’s memory continues to be reflected in the landscape around Boho, In addition to the Tobar Feber there is a bullaun associated with the saint preserved at Killydrum townland. She is the patron of the Sacred Heart Church at Boho, one of the very few historic church sites still in Catholic hands. The parish website here adds some other details to Saint Feber’s story, claiming that she was the daughter of a local druid who was converted to Christianity by Saint Molaise of Devenish. It says too that the holy well of Saint Feber has a particular reputation for curing warts. There is a second well at Monea and Saint Feber is also the patron of the Catholic parish church there.
So, although not much historical information has survived about this female saint of Fermanagh, her memory is still very much alive in the place where she once flourished.
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