OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Folk tradition

  • Christmas Eve in Ireland

    Frontispiece to The Irish Christmas (Dublin, 1917).

    Today is Christmas Eve and as a child I remember hearing that on this night we should leave a light shining in the front window of the house. This was to act as a signal that even if there was ‘no room at the inn’ elsewhere, Saint Joseph and Our Blessed Lady would find shelter with us. Katharine Tynan in her poem ‘Christmas Eve in Ireland’ alludes to this tradition and also to the fact that people not only displayed lights but kept their doors unlocked. Obviously it was an earlier and more innocent age! I’ve also published a poem called Saint Brigid’s Lullabies at my other site Trias Thaumaturga today, you can read it here.

    CHRISTMAS EVE IN IRELAND
    NOT a cabin in the Glen shuts its door to-night,
    Lest the travellers abroad knock in vain and pass,
    Just a humble gentleman and a lady bright
    And she to be riding on an ass.
    Grief is on her goodman, that the inns deny
    Shelter to his dearest Dear in her hour of need;
    That her Babe of royal birth, starriest, most high,
    Has not where to lay His head.
    Must they turn in sadness to the cattle byre
    And the kind beasts once again shake the bed for
    Him?
    Not a cabin in the Glen but heaps wood on the fire
    And keeps its lamps a-trim.
    Now the woman makes the bed, smooths the linen
    sheet,
    Spreads the blanket, soft and white, that her
    own hands spun.
    Whisht! is that the ass that comes, on his four
    little feet,
    Carrying the Holy One ?
    Nay, ’twas but the wind and rain, the sand on the
    floor.
    A bitter night, yea, cruel, for folk to be abroad.
    And she, not fit for hardship, outside a fast-closed
    door,
    And her Son the Son of God!
    Is it the moon that’s turning the dark world to
    bright ?
    Is it some wonderful dawning in the night and
    cold ?
    Whisht! did you see a shining One and Him to
    be clad in light
    And the wings and head of Him gold ?
    Who are then those people, hurrying, hasting,
    those,
    And they all looking up in the sky this night of
    wondrous things ?
    Oh, those I think be shepherdmen, and they that
    follow close
    I think by their look be kings.
    Not a cabin in the Glen shuts the door till day,
    Lest the heavenly travellers come, knock again
    in vain.
    All the night the dulcimers, flutes, and hautboys
    play,
    And the angels walk with men.
    The Flower of Peace – A Collection of the Devotional Poetry of Katharine Tynan, 11-12.

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  • A Celtic Weather Saint: Cewydd of the Rain

    The summer of 2012 was one of the wettest on record and so I enjoyed this nineteenth-century antiquarian account of a ‘Celtic’ challenger to the claim of the Saxon Saint Swithin to be chief of the ‘weather saints’. Scholars are unable to trace the exact origins of the legend that if it rains on the feast of Saint Swithin, celebrated on July 15, it will rain for forty days.  In the notes and queries section of the 1888 volume of the Welsh journal, Archaeologia Cambrensis, however, writer M. L. Dawson argued that Cewydd, an obscure saint of Anglesey, has a prior claim. I enjoyed the way in which the author starts by saying that it would be foolish to challenge Saint Swithin’s standing, yet obviously relishes the chance to demonstrate that the Saxon saint was just a johnny-come-lately compared with those of the natives. Saint Cewydd is furnished with a splendid pedigree which even includes the family of King Arthur, particularly interesting to me is that he also claims to be the brother of the Irish saint, Aidan (Maedoc) of Ferns, whose feast we will celebrate at the end of next month: 


    A Celtic Weather Saint. — Most countries possess their special weather saint, whose festival, according as it is dry or wet, decides the meteorological character of the following forty days. St. Swithin has now so long reigned supreme as the weather saint of Great Britain, that it would, perhaps, be vain to denounce him as the Saxon usurper of the rights of a Celtic weather saint, who presided over the rainfall of our country as far back as the time of King Arthur. Nevertheless, it seems probable that the honourable distinction of weather saint belongs rather to the Celtic “St. Cewydd of the Rain” than to the Saxon bishop of comparatively modern times.

    St. Cewydd was one of a remarkable family, being the son of Caw, lord of Cwm Cawlwyd or Cowllwg, who, according to Achau y Saint, was “deprived of his territories by the Gwyddyl Ffichti, or, as the general term may be interpreted, by the Picts and Scots; in consequence of which he and his numerous family retired to Wales. He settled at Twrcelyn, in Anglesey, where lands were bestowed upon him by Maelgwn Gwynedd; and it is also said that lands were granted to some of his children by Arthur in Siluria”. Most of them distinguished themselves in one way or another, and founded churches, of which they became the patron saints. St. Cewydd’s eldest brother, Hywel, was killed in a civil war by King Arthur; his brother Aneurin, otherwise known as Gildas, became the most celebrated scholar of the day; another brother, Aeddan, was first Bishop of Ferns; while his sister, Cwyllog, was married to King Arthur’s nephew, the traitor Modred. Unfortunately, we know but little of the history of St. Cewydd himself, beyond the fact that he founded churches at Diserth, Aberedwy, in Radnorshire, and at Llangewydd, in Glamorganshire. Local nomenclature, however, would lead us to suppose that he lived in the neighbourhood of Diserth, for a farm in Llanfihangel Bryn Pabuan is still called Cil gewydd, i.e., the Cell of Cewydd, while a mountain- track above Llandeilo Graban, once trodden by the feet of the saint, perhaps, as he journeyed over the hills to visit his brother Maelog at his monastery of Llowes, yet bears the name of Rhiw Gewydd, i.e., Cewydd’s Hill. But no tradition remains to tell us how the saint won his title of “Cewydd of the Rain”, as he is called in old Welsh writings, and we are indebted to Lewis Glyn Cothi for our knowledge of the popular superstition which connected the rainfall with the festiyal of the saint. In a poem, or rather an elegy, written by him on the death of Morgan, son of Sir David Gam, he compares the tears shed over the departed hero to the forty days’ rain which fell after St. Cewydd’s festival:

    “Gwlad Vrychan am Vorgan vydd
    Ail i gawod wyl Gewydd.
    Deugain niau davnau dwvr
    Ar ruddiau yw’r aweddwvr.
    Deugain mlynedd i heddyw
    Yr wyl y beirdd ar ol y byw.”

    The said festival took place on July 1, O.S.; therefore, allowing for the difference between Old and New Style, it now occurs on July 13, two days before St. Swithin’s. Until quite lately, a feast or wake was held in Aberedwy parish the second week in July in honour of Saint Cewydd. That the popular belief in St. Cewydd’s power over the weather was not confined to the Welsh portion of Great Britain is proved by an old English proverb, which, altogether ignoring St. Swithin’s claims, says:

    ” If the first of July be rainy weather,
    ‘T will rain more or less for a month together.”

    M. L. Dawson.

    Archaeologia Cambrensis, 5th series, Volume 5 (1888), 270-271.

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  • Saint Nicholas: the Irish Connection

    December 6 is the commemoration of an eastern saint who is truly loved the world over – Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra. A Russian lady once told me that her people love Saint Nicholas so much that they are apt to forget he isn’t actually Russian himself. This set me wondering if there might be an Irish dimension to the veneration of the great bishop of Myra. I found that there is, but that it owes more to the Normans and the Crusades than to the earlier native church. In his 12th-century Martyrology, Marianus O’Gorman begins the list of saints commemorated today with ‘Nicolaus a holy man’. The Cathedral of Galway, constructed in 1320, was dedicated to Saint Nicholas in his capacity as a protector of seafarers. He was seen as an appropriate patron for a rising commercial city and indeed, the great bishop of Myra is the diocesan patron of Galway and is honoured as such in the Litany of Irish Saints. But Ireland makes an even more extraordinary claim in relation to Saint Nicholas – it claims to be the place where he is buried! Below is an article from an Irish newspaper which summarizes the story:


    CURIOSITIES: SANTA CLAUS may well be buried in a little country graveyard in south Kilkenny. Incredible as this might seem there is evidence to substantiate the possibility that Saint Nicholas of Myra, the original Santa Claus, is buried just west of Jerpoint Abbey, one of the finest Cistercian ruins in Ireland, in Co Kilkenny. The unmarked grave is in the ruined church at Newtown-Jerpoint (two kilometres outside Thomastown) once the site of a thriving Norman town that was abandoned in the 17th century probably due to plague, writes Gerry Moran.

    St Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Turkey, died in AD 342 and was buried there. How his remains, or a portion of them, arrived in south Kilkenny has much to do with the Norman crusaders.

    Jerpoint Abbey was founded around 1158 by Donnchadh Mac Giolla Phádraig, King of Ossory. In 1180, it was taken over by the Cistercian order. In 1200, William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, of Kilkenny Castle, decided to build a new town just across the river from Jerpoint Abbey. He called the town Nova Villa Juxta Geripons meaning “The New Town Across from Jerpoint”. That same year the Church of St Nicholas of Myra was built in the town and, according to the historian Canon Carrigan, the tomb was laid that same year also.

    When Strongbow invaded Ireland in 1169, his most trusted lieutenant was Sir Humphrey De Fraine. When the church of Newtown-Jerpoint was built and dedicated to St Nicholas of Myra in 1200, the most powerful Anglo-Norman baron in south Kilkenny was Nicholas De Fraine, son of Sir Humphrey.

    The story goes that the Norman Knights of Jerpoint, the crusading De Fraines (or De Freynes) when forced to evacuate the Holy Land exhumed the remains of St Nicholas of Myra and brought them to Normandy from where they eventually found their way to Jerpoint. The remains were laid to rest beneath a slab, now broken across the centre, depicting a monk in habit and cowl. The grave, whether it be that of the real Santa Claus or not, can still be seen to this day.
    [see photograph above]

    I am cynical about these old stories that supposedly go back into the mists of time, often the truth is that they cannot be traced back beyond the beginnings of the Victorian tourist era. I would be interested to know how far back this one about Saint Nicholas can really be charted in the historical record, if this is a genuine medieval tradition, one would expect to find some mention of it somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it cannot be traced back any further than the 19th century. I wouldn’t be surprised either if it receives a new lease of life in our own time when yarns about secret lore, knights, crusaders and relics have topped the bestseller lists.


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