OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Irish Saints

  • Saint Davog of Lough Derg, July 24

    July 24 is one of the three feast days assigned to Saint Davog (Dabheoc) of Lough Derg, County Donegal, home to the medieval pilgrimage site of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory. As this day falls within the pilgrimage season it is the one on which the memory of this early saint is marked on the island itself. As you can see from the photograph above (taken on my last visit) Saint Davog gives his name to one of the boats which ferries pilgrims to the island. You can also see the beautiful marble statue of the saint in the basilica and hear the current Prior recite a prayer to Saint Davog by clicking on this link. I have already posted a full account of Saint Davog on his January 1 feast day here, but below we have a reminder of his career from Irish Anglican writer St. John Drelincourt Seymour (1880-1950), who penned a number of interesting historical studies including Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: a Medieval Pilgrimage in Ireland:

    At one time Station Island was known as St. Dabheoc’s Island, from which the cave and surrounding district took the name of Termon-Dabheoc. This saint, whose name sometimes appears under such forms as Beoc and Mobheoc, following a recognised method of treating Irish saints’ names, and is latinized Dabeocus, Abogus, Arvogus, and perhaps Beanus, is held to be the patron saint of Lough Derg. Three festivals were annually held in his honour viz., January 1st, July 24th, and December 16th. In the Martyrology of Tallaght occurs the following allusion to him:

    “Aedh, Lochagerg, alias Daibheog.”

    Lochagerg, or Loch Gerg, being other forms of Lough Derg. St. Cummian of Connor, in his poem on the characteristic virtues of Irish Saints, credits him with performing the following austerities, which were also practised by other persons eminent for sanctity in Ireland and the East:

    “Mobheoc the gifted, loved,
    According to the synod of the learned,
    That often in bowing his head
    He plunged it under water.”
    His memory is still perpetuated in the townland-denomination of Seeavoc on the southern extremity of the lake. This name means “St. Dabheoc’s Seat,” and this curious structure may still be seen in the vicinity, though it is not now reckoned as on the above townland.

    It is certain that at some remote date a saint named Dabheoc lived at Lough Derg, and was very probably the original founder of the monastery there. Beyond this all is mere conjecture. There exists some uncertainty as to whether there were not two saints of the same name connected with the spot, the one a Welshman, son of a king named Brecan, who ruled over a district now represented by Brecknock, the other an Irishman, descended from Dichu, St. Patrick’s convert. But that an important Celtic monastery flourished here at an early date is made certain by the irrefragable arguments of stone. On Saints’ Island are the remains of an ancient oratory and cemetery, while the large lis, or circular earthen enclosure there, probably marks the site of the original monastic establishment. On Station Island are the remains of the “penal beds,” which so great an authority as Wakeman, after a careful examination, considered to be the ruins of what were originally bee-hive oratories, probably of the ninth century, of which examples are to be found along the west coast of Ireland. It seems probable that the two islands were held as one by the Celtic monks, forming together the monastery of Lough Derg. Add to the above the remains of carved stones, inscribed monuments, and fragments of crosses, and some small conception may be formed of its erstwhile importance.

    But, as unfortunately happens so often in Ireland, the mists settle down very speedily, and the history of the site is blotted out. Under the year 721 the Four Masters record the death of Cillene of Lough Derg, who was probably an inmate, or perhaps abbot, of the establishment. It is quite probable that at some unrecorded date the monastery was wiped out by the Danish invaders in their terrible forays.
    Rev. St. John D. Seymour, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: a Medieval Pilgrimage in Ireland (Dundalk, n.d. 1918?) 11-13.

     

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  • The Larks of Glendalough

     

    June 3 is the feast of Saint Kevin of Glendalough, a saint in whom there has been a revival of interest in recent decades thanks to his status as a poster boy for ‘Celtic Christianity’. This movement claims that our native saints were especially in tune with the natural environment and as a result enjoyed a special relationship with the animal creation. And no anthology of ‘Celtic Christianity’ is complete without a reference to one of the most famous episodes from Saint Kevin’s hagiography – the sheltering of a nesting bird in his outstretched, praying hands until her young have fledged. It is a theme which has also inspired poets (including the late Seamus Heaney), and below is a 1905 example, The Larks of Glendalough, by Thomas Walsh. It is striking that Walsh has chosen the lark here for most retellings of this tale, which originated in the History and Topography of Ireland by the twelfth-century chronicler, Gerald of Wales, identify the avian as a blackbird. I am left wondering therefore if Walsh has conflated the story of the blackbird which nests in Saint Kevin’s palm with another legend of Glendalough which seeks to explain why the song of the lark is never heard over the site. This lark legend is bound up with the construction of the Seven Churches of Glendalough and here it is as told to a mid-nineteenth-century traveller to Ireland by his guide, a Mr. Winder:

    Among the portentous events that my friend Mr. Winder told me was this,— that for 1,300 years the skylark had never been heard to warble over the lake, because St. Kevin prayed that it might never have the power to do so; and the reason was, that the men who were building the city where the Seven Churches stand had made a vow to commence their work each day as soon as the lark rose, and not to leave off till the sun had set. They kept their vow, and were in consequence so worn out with fatigue, that many of them died; when St. Kevin, out of compassion, offered up his prayers that no lark should henceforth rise into the air — the prayer was granted, and ‘the plague was stayed.’ All this is firmly believed. Subsequent to this, a man, who was driving me in a jaunting-car, told me that it was as true as we were sitting in the car that the skylark was never heard to warble over the lake for 1,300 years, though it was heard commonly outside the Seven Churches, at the distance of a few hundred yards. I asked him, if he did not think that skylarks preferred warbling over cornfields rather than over lakes?”

              The tourist’s illustrated hand-book for Ireland, (London, 1854), 42. 

    The lark legend thus seems quite distinct from that of Saint Kevin and the Blackbird. I have not been able to find out any more about our poet Thomas Walsh but, whether or not he has confused his Glendalough bird legends here, his poem at least has the merit of depicting Saint Kevin as someone engaged in the monastic life. Indeed, Walsh seems to be describing Saint Kevin using the ancient prayer posture known as crois-fhigill, cross-vigil, where the arms are outspread in imitation of Christ’s position on the cross. Overall, although it is typical of the sentimental verse published in the popular religious press of this time, I find The Larks of Glendalough charming:
     
    The Larks of Glendalough
    By Thomas Walsh

    All night the gentle saint had prayed,
    And, heedless of the thrush and dove,
    His radiant spirit still delayed
    To hear the seraph choirs above.

    So still he knelt — his arms outspread,
    His head thrown backward from his breast —
    A lark across the casement sped,
    And in his fingers built its nest.

    The angel music from his soul
    Receded with the flood of day;
    Through Glendalough the sunlight stole
    And brushed the mists and dews away.

    ’Twas then the saint beheld the bird
    Serenely nesting in his hand,
    And murmured, “Ah, if thou hadst heard
    The matins in that seraph land!”

    Then, soft again he turned to pray;
    Nor moved his arm at even close
    Or matin call from day to day
    Until their nestling voices rose.

    And when his loving task was done,
    Above his cell he heard them cry: —
    “O Kevin, Kevin! Gentle one !
    We bear to heaven thy soul’s reply!”

    The Rosary Magazine, Volume 26, (January-June 1905), 18.

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  • Saint Colmán Lobhar of Moynoe, May 21

     

    On May 21 we find the feast of Saint Colmán, one of a number of Irish saints to be described as lobhar, a ‘leper’. The name Colmán is derived from Colum and along with a bewildering number of other variants is one of the most commonly found names on the Irish calendars of the saints. Our foremost modern hagiologist, Pádraig Ó Riain, has argued that many of these saints represent local manifestations of the cult of the most famous Colum of them all – Saint Colum Cille (Columba). Saint Colmán Lobhar of Moynoe, County Clare, might fit this theory. Canon O’Hanlon in Volume V of his Lives of the Irish Saints lists the evidence from the calendars and offers some observations on the nature of the ‘leprosy’ associated with our saint:

    Article VII. St. Colman, Lobhar, or the Leper, of Magh-n-ec- or Moyne, County of Clare

    In the”Feilire”of St.Aengus, the festival of “zealous Colman, a leper,” is mentioned at this date;’ and, therefore we may infer, that he flourished, at an early period, in the Irish church. His office is not known. The Martyrology of Tallagh registers this name, at the 21st of May. His place is called Maighe Eo. The Bollandists have a festival for Colmanus leprosus de Magh-eo, on the same authority; but, as they allege, little more can they find regarding him, except that Colgan refers Colmanus Lobhar and his feast to this date. Muighe-Eo—which was in Dal-Cais—must be distinguished from Mayo, in Connaught. Its fuller denomination was Maigh-neo-Norbhraighe, now known as Moynoe, or Mayno, an old church, which gives name to a parish, on the margin of Lough Derg, in the barony of Upper Tulla, and county of Clare. A church at this place had been burned by the Conmaicni, in 1084. This church is mentioned, also, in the Caithreim Toirdheal-bhaigh, or “Wars of Thomond,” at the year 1318, as the hereditary termon of the Ui-Bloid. This day veneration was paid to Colman, Lobhar, or the Leper, of Magh-n-eo, in Dal-glais, as we find entered,in the Martyrology of Donegal. It  seems not improbable, that some of our saints, called Lepers, had not been afflicted with the same form of disease, known as leprosy, in certain countries at the present time; and, it is likely enough, that their malady was some form of erysipelas, or of a skin distemper, corresponding with the bodily infirmity to which allusion has been made.

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