OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Saints of Donegal

  • Pilgrimages in Donegal

    Pilgrimages to a variety of ancient ecclesiastical sites in Ireland are commonplace today, but below is an article from 1877 when things were rather different. It is a report in the Australian press of a lecture given by a priest who commended the importance of visiting traditional holy sites, in this case the Doon Well in County Donegal. I found this piece interesting not just for the choice of Donegal rather than some of the more famous places Father Barter listed towards the end of his talk, but also for the way in which he linked the Doon well to Lourdes, which had grown in fame and popularity throughout the Catholic world since the apparitions to Saint Bernadette there nearly twenty years earlier. I noticed a typically Victorian presentation of Irish holy places as wild and remote, an idea, then as now, central to ‘Celtic Christianity’ and a sense of a lost earlier and purer age. Here it’s perhaps best summed up by the author’s reference to ‘the remote glens of Donegal, where the relics of some of the greatest of our Irish saints are not enshrined in gold or silver, but in crumbling walls, swathed in green ivy’. The writer recalls memories of the Penal Era as well, here too Victorian writers often presented the liturgy offered at the Mass Rock in a lonely glen as surpassing in spiritual quality the glories of High Mass offered in a European cathedral. I was unable to find out any further information on Father James Barter but for further information on the Doon Well you can do no better than this post by Dr Louise Nugent on her Pilgrimage in Medieval Ireland site:

    IRELAND. 

    PILGRIMAGES IN DONEGAL.

    The Freeman reports the following lecture which was recently delivered by the Rev. James Barter, at the rooms of the St. Kevin’s branch of the Catholic Union:—

    The rev. lecturer said a thick rain was falling when he drove late one evening last summer over the long and steep hill of Meenaroy, near Letterkenny, in the county Donegal. Looking before him into the dim twilight he saw a figure moving forward with much difficulty. Soon he came up with a peasant carrying a parcel on his
    back, who told him he was returning from a pilgrimage to “Doon Well,” with a few bottles of its miraculous water, and that his home was still distant thirty miles off, near those mighty cliffs on the western coast of the county beneath which the waves of the wild Atlantic rave and roar for ever. The peasant went on to talk with enthusiasm of the supernatural powers of his precious burden, while he listened, and fancied he heard in the moaning of the wind the sneers of modern unbelievers, directed, however, with harmless effect, against the strong faith of the humble pilgrim. (Applause.) As he descended into the valley of Lough Finn he looked back upon the poor man whom he had just left, and he was swaying under his heavy burden and the pelting rain. He watched him until his bent form receded into the darkness, and that vision was stamped upon his memory. This incident suggested the idea of seizing the present occasion to awaken the memories of those places in his own native mountains consecrated by the piety of a thousand years. The present seemed to him a fitting time to tread again these holy scenes. (Applause.) The old devotion of France for her ancient shrines, which had been swept away by the shock of the Revolution, had been revived. Within the last few years the apparition of our blessed Lady to the poor girl, Bernadette Soubirons, in the grotto at Lourdes, has poured balm into the wounds inflicted on that great Catholic nation by blasphemers who set up the Goddess of Reason in Paris. Summer after summer a long stream of pilgrims, even from our own shores, poured out upon the scene of that apparition, and their gratitude for favours there received has crowned the rock of Massabielle with one of the finest temples of modern times. While wealth and fashion hurry through the gay cities of the Continent to swell the tide towards this favoured shrine and the celebrated sanctuary of Paray le Monial, it was, he thought, “a holy and wholesome thought” for such of his countrymen as declined to be dragged at the chariot wheels of fashion to gird their loins with the coarse cincture of the pilgrim of olden time and retire, into the remote glens of Donegal, where the relics of some of the greatest of our, Irish saints are not enshrined in gold or silver, but in crumbling walls, swathed in green ivy. (Hear, hear.) Here the vastness of the solitude would enable one to commune more fervently with God—the heart would be moved more deeply by the earnest piety of a fine people, and the will strengthened by the example of their pure and simple lives. (Applause.)

    After a brilliant description of the scenery surrounding the Rock of Doon, the lecturer related some of the historic memories connected with it. He said it was under the shadow of that rock the Catholics of the neighbourhood had to hear Mass in the dark days of persecution. It was upon that rock the O’Donnells were inaugurated chieftains of Tyrconnell, and it was here the ill-fated Sir Cahir O’Doherty fell, fighting for his rights against the English, in 1608, when he rose in rebellion to revenge the outrage offered him by Sir George Paulett, Governor of Derry. (Applause.) Close to this Rock of Doon, said the lecturer, is a well, blessed by a holy priest who lay concealed in these mountains. This was the sacred fountain from which the poor man whom he had met on the bleak Meenaroy fetched his burden, and it was the object of one of the most frequented pilgrimages in Donegal. On special or station days pilgrims might be seen in long procession winding over the mountain path leading to this privileged spot. They go round the well—some on their knees—reciting the rosary – and other prayers in tones so solemn and subdued that in the distance they came swelling on the ear like the tender wailing of the “Miserere.” (Applause.) The holy places of Palestine were then sketched, and the enthusiasm with which they were frequented by pilgrims from the west down to the tune the Crusaders were expelled from Jerusalem by the Moslem. What had occurred, said the lecturer, in the Holy Land in early Christian times, and at Lourdes in our own day, was repeated at the well of Doon and at many another holy well and shrine in Ireland, for the hand of God had not been shortened. In Donegal there was not the Holy Sepulchre, nor the Mount of Olives, nor Calvary, but we had the penitential retreat of St. Patrick in the Island of Lough Derg, and numerous spots sanctified by the presence of St. Columba, now marked by a rude cross, or a blessed well, or the grass-grown remains of a chapel.

    Over twelve centuries had passed away since Columba’s time, but his memory was still cherished by the people of his native mountains, and the faith of which he was the great apostle was still as green in their hearts as the wooded slope at Gartan on which he was born. These holy places were now sadly neglected. Sheep and cattle grazed within their hallowed precincts. He was sure they would join him that evening in the expression of a hope that a faithful people would help, before many years, to build upon these privileged spots, if not imposing structures, at least neat chapels, in which the local clergy could hear the confessions of the pilgrims on station days. It was not in Donegal alone these places of pilgrimage were to be found, for Glendalough, in Wicklow, Clonmacnoise, on the Shannon, and St. Brigid’s, in Clare, were celebrated among the shrines of Ireland. There was Gougan Barra also, the famous sanctuary of St. Finbarre, rising out of the smooth lake, with a crown of moss on its brow, in which the traveller could read another lesson on the neglect with which the shrines of our country were treated. But he story of Gougan Barra and the other celebrated pilgrimages of Ireland remained to be told as it deserved. He had begun at least to give the history and scene of the holy places at Tyrconnell.

    Often had he wandered from his home there among those peaceful shades, and filled his soul with their sacred associations, and in inviting his countrymen to follow his example he felt convinced they would be amply rewarded. (Applause.)

    The Advocate, Saturday February 24, 1877, p.5

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  • Domhnach na Cincíse: An Spiorad Naomh umainn

     

    To mark the feast of Pentecost below is a short poem, an Invocation of the Holy Spirit, by Maol Íosa Ó Brolcháin, a scholar saint of Donegal, who died in 1086 and whose feast day is commemorated on January 16. A 2013 post on the saint and his work can be found in the blog archive here. The original Irish text and a Modern Irish version can be found in Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin’s 1986 study Maol Íosa Ó Brolcháin, below is the text in Modern Irish plus an English translation from George Sigerson’s 1897 anthology Bards of the Gael and Gall:

    An Spiorad Naomh umainn
    ionainn agus linn,
    an Spiorad Naomh chugainn;
    tagadh, a Chríost go tobann.
     
    An Spiorad Naomh ag áitreabh
    ár gcoirp is ár n-anama;
    dár slánú go réidh
    ar ghuais, ar ghalar,
     
    ar dheamhain, ar pheacaí
    ar ifreann lena ilolc;
    A Íosa! go mbeannaí
    agus go saora do Spiorad sinn. 

    HOLY SPIRIT

    MAELISU *

    Holy Spirit of Love
    In us, round us, above;
    Holy Spirit, we pray
    Send, sweet Jesus! this day.
     
    Holy Spirit, to win
    Body and soul within,
    To guide us that we be 
    From ills and illness free,
     
    From sin and demons’ snare,
    From Hell and evils there,
    O Holy Spirit, come!
    Hallow our heart, Thy home.

    * Maelisu, grandson of Brolcan, of Derry, died in the year 1038. ‘Mael-Isu” means “Client of Jesus” (literally, the “Tonsured of Jesus”.

    George Sigerson, Bards of the Gael and Gall (London, 1897), 192.

    Note: Sigerson has given the date of the poet’s death as 1038. The Annals of Ulster however record Máol Íosa’s death in 1086, describing him as ’eminent in wisdom and piety and in poetry in both languages ‘, i.e. Irish and Latin. A more literal translation can be found in Gerard Murphy’s 1956 anthology, Early Irish Lyrics: Eighth to Twelfth Centuries.
     

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  • Saint Dabheoc of Lough Derg, December 16

    On December 16 the Calendar of Cashel, an eleventh-century source sadly no no longer extant, records a feast attributed by some of the nineteenth-century scholars of the saints to Saint Dabheoc of Lough Derg, the County Donegal site of the Saint Patrick’s Purgatory pilgrimage. Saint Dabheoc has two feasts preserved in the Irish martyrologies, one at January 1 and one at July 24. None of them mention a third feast day at December 16 and it seems, from what the Ordnance Survey scholar John O’Donovan recorded when he visited Saints’ Island in 1835, that the source of today’s feast is the seventeenth-century hagiologist, Friar John Colgan, who had access to the now lost Calendar of Cashel:

     Colgan,..  speaking of Daveog, the patron, .. says: St. Dabeocus is held in the
    greatest veneration to the present day, and his festivity is observed
    three days in every year, according to our Festilogies, viz., on the 1st
    of January, 24th of July, and 16th of December. So Marian Gorman,
    Cathal Maguire and the Martyrologies of Tallaght and Donegal. But the
    Calendar of Cashel places his festival day only on the 16th of December. 

    Michael Herity, ed. Ordnance Survey Letters Donegal- Letters Containing
    Information Relative to the Antiquities of the County of Donegal
    Collected During the Progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1835     (Four
    Masters Press, Dublin, 2000), 122-123.

    Since the December feast is missing from the earliest martyrologies as well as from the 1630 Martyrology of Donegal (where we might have expected to find it), I wondered if it was possible that we were dealing with a case of mistaken identity here. That suspicion was strengthened when I noted that Professor Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints discusses another Ulster saint, Mobheóg of Artraige, at December 16. Here we are back to the familiar problem of the many different forms that the names of Irish saints can take, for Dabheoc or Dobheóg is sometimes known as Beoán, Beóg and Mobheóg. It therefore seems possible that the feast in the Calendar of Cashel, attributed by Father Colgan to Dabheoc of Lough Derg, was actually the feast of Mobheóg of Artraige observed in Wexford on December 16. But although I am not convinced that today is a feast of Saint Dabheoc of Lough Derg I am nevertheless delighted to offer another reminder of his career as he is a saint to whom I feel a personal connection. I have taken part in the pilgimage at Lough Derg three times and on my first all-night vigil I was sorely tempted to give up when the going got tough. Instead I made my way to the side altar of the basilica where the statue of Saint Dabheoc stands and asked for his help to complete the rest of the vigil. I have asked for his intercession ever since and feel he is one of many Irish saints who deserves to be better known.

    The account below of Saint Dabheoc and his island home has been taken from Chapter Five of Father Daniel O’Connor’s 1879 guide to Lough Derg:

    Oilean-na-naomh

    About two miles north of Station Island lies
    Saints’ Island, anciently called Oilean-na-naomh, and more anciently
    still, St. Dabheoc’s Island [This name, “Dabheoc,” is usually pronounced as if written Davoc.]. In pre-Reformation times there stood on
    Saints’ Island a venerable convent of Augustinians; and, at least down
    to the year 1497, this island would appear to have been the place of
    pilgrimage. The island is like a ring in form, and rises on all sides in
    gentle acclivity from the lake, its highest elevation being about forty
    feet above the level of the lake.

    Saints’
    Island bears evident traces of agriculture, and of having been turned
    to profitable account in the days when the Canons Regular of St.
    Augustine were denizens of the place. The soil of the island is rank and
    loamy, and seems to have partaken of the ruin which has visited with
    such destruction its holy cloisters and churches. It is quite overgrown
    with coarse grass, with ferns and rushes; and in some parts of it a
    stunted covering of heather indicates that it has, to some extent,
    returned to its original state of wildness. The ruins of the sacred
    enclosures, monastery, churches and cemetery, are overgrown with
    luxuriant weeds. The island has very few trees or shrubs, if we except
    some slender trees of mountain ash, and some whitethorn bushes, which
    are really worth observing, as they are hoar with antiquity. These
    bushes are sparsely scattered over the island, but at its eastern
    extremity a dense cluster of them overshadows the debris of the
    buildings; and, judging from the gray, dank moss adhering to their
    branches, they appear to date from the time these buildings were
    demolished.

    On the southern slope of the island were situated the convent gardens, as we may plainly infer from the
    enclosures, as well as from the superior fertility of the soil. During the winter season these gardens present a more marked contrast for their verdure; and herbs and flowers are known to grow here, which are not found elsewhere through these islands and mountains.

    The eastern half of the island was laid out in fields, as the remains of the earthen fences or enclosures denote. These fences are inhabited by a numerous colony of rabbits, of different colours, brown, white and black, that skip about in every direction, and in a variety of ways contribute their own little best “to lend enchantment to the scene.”

    The western half of the island appears to have been used as a “common” for pasture, as it is not intersected by fences, though here also the furrowed surface presents indications of its having yielded to the beneficent sway of the spade and ploughshare.The grass and hay grown on Saints’ Island are said to be so rank and unsavoury as to be very noxious to cattle. Formerly, I have been informed, cattle and sheep were put to pasture on it, till the mortality which set in amongst them awakened their owners to the dangers of the situation. And thus, fortunately, the sacred precincts and ruins on the island are no longer trampled upon, dishonoured and profaned by the beasts of the field, which in other places have occasioned such injury to the ancient monuments of our country.

    In the early ages of the faith in Ireland there appears to have prevailed a custom, borrowed from the pagan period, of erecting a circular earthen fort or enclosure convenient to, or around the religious houses. Thus, in Father O’Hanlon’s Life of St. Fanchea, we read of her brother, St. Endeus, having with his own hands raised round his sister’s nunnery, at Rossory, a large múr, or earthwork, strengthened by deep circular fosses, the remains of which are still to be seen. And Mr. Wakeman, in his Antiquities of Devenish, says that nearly all the primitive church sites in Fermanagh bear traces of such circumvallations. The writer of the present subject, from his own personal observation of some of
    these sites, can fully endorse Mr. Wakeman’s statement. Near the Abbey of Devenish stood a strongly-fortified rath, remains of which are still evident. The same may be said of Rossory, Inniskeen, &c. Outside Fermanagh the same custom also prevailed. At Clogher and Clones religious houses were founded, for economy sake, near forts, of which we have sufficient evidence for saying that they were erected during the pre-Christian period of our country.

    On Saints’ Island, also, the visitor will perceive a circular earthwork of this class, on the very summit of the island, and to the west of the monastery and cemetery. The diameter of this enclosure measures about twenty yards. A part of this circular earthwork has been intersected by the cemetery, which lies to the east of it; but as much of it, fortunately, still remains as to leave no doubt whatever as to the character and object of this primitive work. It seems strange, indeed, that this interesting object escaped
    the notice of the Ordnance Survey party, and even of O’Donovan himself, who visited the island on the 28th of October, 1835. It is much to be regretted that O’Donovan did not devote more of his time and attention to this locality; as, with his rare knowledge, much that is now hopelessly lost might have been brought to light. He came, as we said, on the 28th of October, and on Hallow-Eve following he wrote, from Ballyshannon, an account of his visit to the lake, having derived, as he jocosely states, no benefit from his turas save a severe cold.

    Within this fort on Saints’ Island, or, at any rate, in the cemetery adjoining, it is not too much of conjecture to say that the monastery founded here by St. Dabheoc, in the days of St. Patrick, stood; and that here his order flourished till the time of the Danish invasion….

    …There is an air of loneliness and desolation about Saints’ Island, which is truly affecting. Silence, still as death, reigns round these holy precincts, where once the prayer of the pilgrim, the pious chant of the monks, ‘mid ceremony and sacrifice, resounded. Of this island we may repeat with truth what was said of “Arran of the Saints,” that the living God alone knows the number of holy persons who here await their final resurrection.

    Standing on this holy island, where stood the monastery of St. Dabheoc, where stood the sanctuary of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, which during the middle ages became’the most famous shrine of penance and purification in Western Europe’ the following sweet lines recur to memory: —

    “God of this Irish isle,
    Sacred and old,
    Bright in the morning smile
    Is the lake’s fold;
    Here where thy saints have trod,
    Here where they prayed,
    Hear me, O saving God!
    May I be saved!”

    Rev. Daniel O’Connor,  Lough Derg and Its Pilgrimages (Dublin, 1879),  26-31. 

     

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