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Tag: Folk tradition

  • Holiday Customs in Ireland: Saint Martin's Day

    November 11 is the feast of Saint Martin of Tours,  a saint much venerated in the Early Irish Church. I have previously given a summary of this devotion here, and now we can turn to having a look at some of the rather strange ‘bloodletting’ customs associated with the feast, in an extract from an 1889 paper on holiday customs in Ireland. As the author says, Irish practices are but part of a European-wide tradition, living in a city I have no personal experience of any of what he describes but it is certainly interesting. There appear to be two central parts to what takes place, one being the sacrifice of blood and the other being a taboo on wheels or anything else being allowed to turn on this day. Curiously, there is an attempt to suggest that Saint Martin was a miller or that he was a martyr, broken on the wheel à la Saint Catherine of Alexandria, to explain this taboo. Hagiography, however, does not depict Saint Martin as either a miller or a martyr but rather as a Roman soldier who sacrificed his cloak to help a beggarman, only to find that he was helping Christ.

    The Holiday Customs of Ireland. 

    By James Mooney.
    (Read before the American Philosophical Society, May 3, 1889.)

    SAINT MARTIN’S DAY, NOVEMBER 11.

    We come now to Saint Martin’s day, a festival which for some reason seems to be connected with animal sacrifice throughout Christian Europe. Among the ancient Greeks, this day was the beginning of the Vinalia or feast of Bacchus, which lasted four days and was a season of public carousing, being considered the time for trying the new wine, but there is no mention of sacrifices. In modern Europe also it is-or was-a time for testing the new wine and for feasting, drinking and public sports, but, in addition to this, we find among all the northern nations traces of sacrifice, which may have come down from the old Teutonic and Keltic religions. With the more practical moderns, this rite has generally degenerated into a simple provision of the winter’s meat. On the continent, the animal commonly selected to die on this occasion is a goose, a preference for which the Norse assign a legendary reason. In England, the goose is killed on Saint Michael’s day, September 29, while Saint Martin’s day is considered about the proper time to kill beef and hogs for winter, whence it comes that a beef is called a marten in the north of England. In Gaelic Ireland, a beef cow is called a márt (marth). In England, it is said that on this night water is changed to wine, a belief transferred in Ireland to Twelfth-night, while in both countries it is held that on this day “No beam doth swinge, nor wheel go round.”

    Saint Martin, who has been styled the second apostle of France, came of a noble family in Pannonia, now included under the government of Hungary. By his father, he was designated for the military profession, but this life was distasteful to him, and he became a religieux, being finally appointed bishop of Tours. He died, surrounded by his clerical companions, about the year 397. In the history of his life, even as related in Butler’s “Lives of the Saints,” a work which deals largely in the marvelous, we find nothing to account for the strange legends and practices connected with his name, and the conclusion seems irresistible that these belong proper connected earlier pagan god or hero. Can it be that under the name of Saint Martin, the modern peasant is honoring Mars, the ancient god of war? The bloody rites which so distinguish this day from all others might well bear out such an assumption.

    In Ireland, the poorer people sacrifice a goose or a rooster, while the wealthier farmers and graziers offer a sheep. When a rooster is to be the victim an effort is made to procure a black one, and in some districts it must be a coilleach Martain, or March cock, i. e., one hatched in March from an egg laid in the same month. Strangely enough, a rooster is never sacrificed in some parts of Kerry, where the people dislike to kill one under any circumstances. The doomed animal is previously “named for Saint Martin,” that is, dedicated for a sacrifice in his honor on Saint Martin’s day, and the vow is sealed by “drawing blood” from it. In the case of a sheep, this is done by cutting a piece from its ear. A weakly sheep is sometimes thus consecrated, and so well tended in consequence that it may become the best in the flock, but no money would tempt the owner to sell it for any other purpose, although there is no objection to selling the wool. The animal is killed on the day preceding the festival, and the flesh is eaten on Saint Martin’s and succeeding days until consumed, a portion being also given to the poor in honor of the saint. The chief object in killing the animal is not to feast upon its flesh, but to “draw blood” for the saint, and it is believed that if any fail to draw blood for Saint Martin, he will draw blood from them.

    In illustration of this belief, there is a story told in Connemara to the effect that a man once named a sheep for Saint Martin, but as the day approached the animal was in such fine condition that his avaricious wife was constantly urging him to sell it instead. Afraid to break his vow, and equally unwilling to incur his wife’s displeasure, he secretly killed a fowl and smeared the bed with the blood. Then getting into bed and covering himself up as if sick, he persuaded the woman that the saint was drawing blood from him in punishment of the contemplated impiety, until such fear seized her heart that she was as anxious as himself to see the sheep killed.

    In Kerry, they tell a story of a man who had been always mindful to draw blood for Saint Martin, but who, for some reason, was at last banished from his native land. One night, in his new home, he was going along a road all alone when he suddenly rememberd that it was Saint Martin’s eve, and there came over him a feeling of deep regret that he could not be at home to draw blood on the occasion. At that moment a horseman rode up from behind and inquired where he was going. On being told, the stranger said that he was going the same way and invited the man to ride behind him on the horse. He consented and mounted behind the other.  Soon the night grew so dark that he could not distinguish objects about him, until, at last, the stranger set him down at the end of his journey, and, sure, where did he find himself but at his own door at home in Ireland. “It was supposed from this,” added the old man who told the story, “that the horseman was Saint Martin.”

    Like the other festivals, Saint Martin’s day is considered to begin at midnight and to last until the following midnight. The blood must be drawn before the “day” begins-usually on the eve as it is a common saying that the saint will take it before, but not after. A part of the blood is soaked up with tow or cotton and preserved for use in connection with certain prayers in the cure of various ailments. In parts of Galway the blood is not preserved but is sprinkled about the house and upon the people, and a bloody cross is marked upon the forehead of each member of the family. Those who are too poor even to afford a rooster sometimes gash one of their own fingers for this purpose.

    The following detailed account of the practice as it exists today on the west coast, together with the reason assigned for the usage, is given by Lady Wilde, and applies equally well to other districts where the primitive customs are still kept alive: “There is an old superstition still observed by the people, that blood must be spilt on St. Martin’s day; so a goose is killed, or a black cock, and the blood is sprinkled over the floor and on the threshold. And some of the flesh is given to the first beggar that comes by, in the name and in honor of St. Martin.

    “In the Arran isles, St. Martin’s day is observed with particular solemnity, and it was held necessary, from ancient times, to spill blood on the ground in honor of the saint. For this purpose a cock was sacrificed; but if such could not be procured, people have been known to cut their finger in order to draw blood, and let it fall upon the earth. The custom arose in this way: St. Martin, having given away all his goods to the poor, was often in want of food, and one day he entered a widow’s house and begged for something to eat. The widow was poor, and having no food in the house, she sacrificed her young child, boiled it, and set it before the saint for supper. Having eaten and taken his departure, the woman went over to the cradle to weep for her lost child; when, lo! there he was, lying whole and well, in a beautiful sleep, as if no evil had ever happened to him; and to commemorate this miracle and from gratitude to the saint, a sacrifice of some living thing is made yearly in his honor. The blood is poured or sprinkled on the ground, and along the door-posts, and both within and without the threshold, and at the four corners of each room in the house.

    ” For this symbol of purification by blood the rich farmers sacrifice a sheep; while the poorer people kill a black cock or a white hen, and sprinkle the blood according to ancient usage. Afterwards the whole family dine upon the sacrificed victim. In some places it was the custom for the master of the house to draw a cross on the arm of each member of the family, and mark it out in blood.”

     Another legend makes it his own son whom Saint Martin, like Abraham of old, was about to sacrifice out of love to God, because in his great poverty he had nothing else to offer him. Although he loved the boy more than life, he killed him late one night, and then lay down, intending to complete the sacrifice at daybreak. On opening his eyes in the morning, he was surprised to see a sheep hanging up in front of him, all skinned and dressed. Full of wonder he went over to his son’s bed, and there he found the boy sleeping quietly and in perfect health, with not even a mark to show where his father had driven the knife. The saint gratefully offered up the sheep as a sacrifice to God in the place of his son, and thus the custom originated in remembrance of the miracle.

    Saint Martin is stated to have been a miller, and his festival is said to commemorate the day on which he was “drawn on the wheel,” an expression which seems to hint at martyrdom and the rack, although there is no authority for believing that he was either a miller or a martyr. In accordance with this tradition, it is held that no wheel should turn, or anything go round, on this day; no yarn may be spun, no mill may grind and no cart may be driven on the highway. Even a stocking should not be knitted, because in so doing it is necessary to turn it round upon the band, and the boatman will not put out from shore on this day, because in starting it is customary to turn the boat round on the water. So strong is this feeling that even in the city of Limerick the large factories sometimes find it difficult to procure a working force on the eleventh of November.

    PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL. XXVI. JULY TO DECEMBER, 1889. No. 130, 377-427 at 413-416.
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  • Saint Gobnait of Ballyvourney, February 11

    Saint Gobnait (Gobnata, Gobnet, Gobnat) is one of those saints whose memory is kept alive in popular tradition, but whose written Life has been lost. The seventeenth-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, reported that in his time her Acts were extant in the south Munster area but had not been published. Her feast appears on the Irish calendars on February 11:

    The Martyrology of Oengus records:

    11. My Gobnat from Muscraige Mitaine, i.e. a sharp-beaked nun, Ernaide is the name of the place in which she is. Or Gobnat of Bairnech in Moin Mor in the south of Ireland, and of the race of Conaire is she : a virgin of Conaire’s race.

    The later Martyrology of Donegal entry reads:

    11. G. TERTIO IDUS FEBRUARII. 11.

    GOBNAT, Virgin. At Moin-mor, in the south of Erinn, is her church, [and at Baile Mhuirne.] She was of the race of Conaire, son of Modh-Lamha, monarch of Erinn ; she is of the race of Heremon.

    Canon O’Hanlon summarizes the mentions of Saint Gobnait on other calendars:
    ‘The designation, Gobnat Ernaidhe, i Muscraidhe Mitine, occurs, in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 11th of February, The Calendar of Cashel enters, at the same date, St. Gobnata, the nun, of the village of Boirne, or Bairnigh, in Munster, and she belonged to the race of Conaire. Charles Maguire says likewise, at this day, Gobnata, of Ernuidhe—I know not where it is—or Gobnata, of Burneach of Moinmhor, in the southern part of Ireland, and she is of the race of Conaire. Marianus O’Gorman, also, states, St. Gobnata, virgin of Moinmor; her church lies in the southern part of Ireland. In Scotland, too, her memory was revered. The holy virgin Gobnat departed to Christ, on the iii. Ides—corresponding with the 11th—of February, according to the Kalendar of Drummond.’

    Thus the calendar references establish her as being both a nun and of aristocratic lineage. They also concur that she flourished in the Ballyvourney, County Cork area, which is borne out by the survival of ruins of a church and other monuments bearing her name in that location. However, for other information, the only source we have is popular devotion and local folklore. The webpage of the Diocese of Kerry has collected some of this:

    ‘The main centres of devotion to Gobnait are Inis Oírr (Aran Islands), Dún Chaoin in West Kerry and Baile Bhúirne near the Cork/Kerry border. There are a number of other places which carry her name – often as Kilgobnet or Cill Ghobnait – near Dungarvan and Milltown in Co. Kerry for example. All of these sites carry a link to the story of Gobnait and the journey undertaken by her to seek “the place of her resurrection”.

    Tradition records that Gobnait left her native Clare to escape some enemy and went to Inis Oírr where an early medieval oratory dedicated to her is extant on the north side of the island near the shore (cf. Archaeological Inventory of County Galway (West Galway), BÁC, 1993, p.96 No. 552, it is known locally as Cill Ghobnait). While on Inis Oírr an angel appeared to her and told her that the “place of her resurrection” was not to be there but in the place where she would find nine white deer grazing. Gobnait then left Inis Oírr and travelled through the southern, coastal counties – Kerry, Cork and Waterford. The foundations associated with her mark her various stops in her search for the nine deer. These places include Dún Chaoin as mentioned, Kilgobnet near Dungarvan and Kilgobnet (between the MacGillicuddy Reeks and the Laune, accessible from the Killorglin/Beaufort Road on the southern side of the Laune; it is interesting to note that this Kilgobnet is also said to have been the original site of the Lughnasa festival now held in Killorglin – Puck Fair! cf. Máire Mac Neill, The Festival of Lughnasa, Oxford, 1962, 299). At various stages of her journey Gobnait met white deer – three at Clondrohid and six at Baile Mhic Íre – but it was only when she crossed the Sullane river that she found the nine as foretold at Baile Bhúirne. This place, on a rise overlooking the Sullane and looking towards the Derrynasaggart hills was where she settled, died and was buried “to await her resurrection”. She is regarded as the great protector of Baile Bhúirne and is much associated with healing. One story tells of how she cured one of her nuns who was sick and how she kept the plague away from Baile Bhúirne by drawing a line along the eastern borders of the parish with her stick beyond which the plague never came. Many accounts exist of how Gobnait prevented invaders (said to have been O’Donoghues of the Glens) from carrying off the cattle – on their approach she let loose the bees from her hives and they attacked the invaders, forcing them to flee. One version of the tale has the beehive turning into a bronze helmet and the bees themselves turning into soldiers. It is said that it was the O’Herlihys who sought her help and that they handed down the bronze helmet from one generation to the next as a great source of protection. M.T. Kelly, writing in the JCHAS , Vol.III No. 25. (1897), p.102 , suggests that Windele had come across accounts of this helmet but that it had been lost somewhere in Kerry. Another version has the beehive turning into a bell which then became Gobnait’s bell.’

    Another story is told of how, during her lifetime, foreigners came intent on building a castle in Baile Bhúirne, but that the locals opposed this (reminiscent of more recent times and rows over development!). Every night after the builders had left the saint knocked down their building by throwing her bell at the castle. Eventually they gave up, the site, ‘Carraig an Chaisleáin’ is still pointed out as proof of the power of Gobnait. Another version of this tale has Gobnait casting a stone ball at the castle each night. This ball is now said to be the one in the wall of the medieval church and can be seen on the rounds.

    Saint Gobnait is an example of how a saint’s memory and cult was kept alive by the oral tradition, in the absence of written accounts. Today this popular devotion centres around the holy well dedicated to her and there is also an old statue which is exhibited for veneration on her feastday in Ballyvourney. This has a specific ritual attached to it:

    ‘A medieval wooden image of Gobnait, kept traditionally in a drawer in the church during the year, is venerated in the parish church on this day. The devotion is known as the tomhas Gobnatan. People bring a ribbon with them and ‘measure’ the statue from top to bottom and around its circumference. This ribbon is then brought home and is used when people get sick or for some special blessing. The statue is thought to belong to the 13th c.’

    The photograph below shows someone taking ‘Gobnait’s measure’ on her feastday:




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  • 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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