St Gobnait: she’s a fine woman

We left St Gobnait, weary but content having spotted her nine white deer in Ballyvourney, the predicted place of her Resurrection. Here she founded a nunnery, renowned for the caring of the poor and sick. But this is the thing, St Gobnait may have lived in the 7C but she remains very much alive and well in Baile Mhúirne today. Everywhere you go there are references to her – the church, the schools are dedicated to her and the local micro brewery is even called 9 White Deer. Whilst staying in Ballyvourney for a few days, we got chatting to our host in our very pleasant Airbnb. Gobnait she exclaimed, she’s a fine woman. It was the present tense I liked. So what sort of woman was she? Well, there are a few clues.

There are many portraits of her but this is my favourite.

This beautiful stained glass panel is by Harry Clarke and can be seen in the Honan Chapel, Cork University College. She is tall and slender, a long neck and a pointed nose. Her skin is milky white and her hair long and auburn. A woman of presence, holding a model of her nunnery in her hand, bees emerging from the jewel-like colours. The reason for the bees will become evident shortly.

Two very unusual representations of the saint still exist in Ballyvourney.

St Gobnait or sile na gig?

The first is a small figure above one of the external windows in the medieval church and is considered by some to be an image of St Gobnait. The pilgrim is required to stand on the internal window sill, reach out and rub the sculpture whilst reciting the prescribed prayers. She is now much worn but looks benign, arms folded at her waist. The lower section of the body is missing and the figure appears naked. It is generally referred to as a Sile na Gig, a female exhibitionist figure, though this doesn’t quite fit the bill either as she is clearly not displaying her sexuality. Whoever she is, she is an integral part of the turas.

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The second portrait is only displayed on the feast day, 11th February, and Whitsun and is equally remarkable.

Medieval Statue of St Gobnait

This is one of only five similar statues remaining in Ireland and dates from the 13C. It is 68cm long and is made from oak. The sculpture is of a female figure wearing long pleated robes and a close fitting headdress. She is much worn, only an eye being discernible in her features.

Her robe was originally painted, the colours still evident in the 1930s, just fragments remaining today:

Distinct traces of blue and gold show on the bodice, as well as the now very yellowed white of her coif: and her skirt must originally have been a deep crimson with touches of gold.

Dorothy Harris:Saint Gobnet, Abbess of Ballyvourney, JCHAS, Vol 8, No 2 1938

It’s potency has long been recognised, even by those not entirely in favour of such things:

Ballyvourney, a small village, is considerable only for some holy relick (I think of Gobnett) which does many cures and miracles, and therefore there is a great resort of pilgrims.

Sir Richard Cox, Regnum Corcagiense or a Description of the Kingdom of Cork, with Remarks on the Antient and Present State thereof, 1687

The OHerlihy family were the airchinnaigh or traditional custodians of relics associated with Gobnait including the statue. It was considered to have enormous healing powers and its fame, or infamy was considerable. It could be borrowed and taken to the bedside of those suffering, especially from smallpox.

The image is kept by one of the family of the O Herlihys, and when anyone is sick of the smallpox, they send for it and sacrifice a sheep to it, and wrap the skin around the sick person and the family eat the sheep.

John Richardson, The Great Folly, Superstition and Idolatry of Pilgrimages in Ireland, 1727

Writing this during the Covid pandemic, I can’t help but wonder how kissing or handling this statue at sickbeds must have cause infections to spread. It seems the statue lost its power to some extent when two of the O Herlihys succumbed to smallpox. The sheep sacrifice is odd too. In 1843 it was given by the family to the parish priest for safe keeping and is now brought out twice a year when this holy relick still commands considerable devotion.

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She is laid on a crisp white linen tablecloth and people queue to pay their respects. First they buy a number of colourful ribbons known as Tomhas Gobhnatan, St Gobnait’s measures, which are the exact length of the statue. Each pilgrim waits for their turn to be with the statue, wraps the ribbons lengthwise and then around her middle. The statue is then kissed and the ribbons taken home to bless the house, or the sick.

So there are painting and statues and sculptures of her, but what kind of woman was St Gobnait?

Bees & Beachair

St Gobnait and her sister nuns were evidently good beekeepers and honey was probably used in their healing treatments. The most famous story associated with bees is when the area was besieged by a marauding chieftain and his band of cattle rustlers. Infuriated, St Gobnait sent swarms of bees after them until the rustlers fled, and the cattle returned.

On the Gospel side of the altar of the present parish church is seen a statue representing St. Gobnait, with the ‘Beachair’ at her feet. The word Beachair means a beehive. The saint had bees for the use of the sister-hood, being used instead of sugar. It happened that marauding chieftain was making an incursion into the country to take away a cattle spoil, or ‘creacht’, when the saint heard of it. She started forth with a hive of bees in her hand, which she let fly in the face of the enemy. The soldiers were thrown into confusion, being stung to death and totally routed.

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In most depictions of the saint she is shown with her beachair. This seems to have been a sort of portable bee hive/container, and was originally also in the care of the O Herlihy family. Originally on display and an object of devotion, this was lost during Penal Times. In the modern church in Ballyvourney, also dedicated to St Gobnait, there is a life size statue of the saint and above her head a vibrant stained glass panel showing a woven beachair.

St Gobnait is appropriately patron saint of beekeepers. Remember how the name Gobnait can be anglised to Abigail which is the Hebrew for Deborah which means honey-bee! Symbolically, beeswax was still used for altar candles in Ballyvourney until at least the 1930s, I rather hope it still is:

Although no longer a holiday of obligation, the eleventh of February, the feast of St. Gobnait is still kept as a day of particular devotion in Ireland and association of her name, with the month sacred to the blessing of candles is singularly appropriate since her emblem is a beehive, and it is from the wax produced by bee industry that the candles destined for altar use are made.

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Gadai Dubh

More evidence of her occasional flashes of anger and intolerance with law-breakers can also be seen in her dealings with a dishonest workman employed to help build her oratory:

Here (in Ballyvourney) she built her oratory, which exists at the present day. It is of circular form, having a very narrow entrance, with two flags serving as jambs. Very soon St. Gobnait had many devotees around her. Next she proceeded to build a convent for the convenience of the sisterhood. In doing so she employed tradesmen. She had also a horse for the carriage of the material. One evening the tradesmen left their tools and implements adjacent to the building, together with the horse grazing around. A wily thief, watching the opportunity, lifted the tools on his back, mounted the horse, and ran away at full speed all night, thinking he was out of danger, when to his amazement, he was caught by the tradesmen running around the building early in the morning. As an example to members of that fraternity they cut his effigy in stone in bold relief. This stone is to be seen at the present day projecting from the south side of the wall which separates the nave and the chancel of the modern ruin. This is called Gadaige Gobnatan, or ‘St. Gobnait’s thief.’

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Also known as the Gadai Dubh, he’s still there, forever cast in stone for his sins! When Professor O Kelly excavated St Gobnait’s House in the 1950s, he suggested that the sculpture dated from the 12C. (St Gobnet’s House, MJ O Kelly, JCHAS vol 57, 1952).

The Bulla

Nor was Gobnait impressed when a pagan tyrant tried to build a castle close to her nunnery. The tyrant starting building his castle on a rock near what is now Coláiste Íosagáin, a quarter of a mile away from her nunnery,

In the western gable end of this ruin is a square hole, which contains a round bowl, polished like ivory. Dr. Joyce, in his ‘Social History of Ireland’ calls it ‘The marvelous healing bowl of Ballyvourney. The late Dr. Franklin, a noted antiquarian says its material is ‘agate stone.’ This was used by the saint in throwing it from a sling at ‘Carrageen a Beanachair’ or rock of the blessing, across the river on the opposite side, which used to knock down a castle which was in course of construction by a pagan tyrant to overcome the neighborhood. The site of this castle is called Carraig an Caislean or ‘Rock of the Castle.’

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Each time the walls went up, St Gobnait threw the stone at the them and each time they came tumbling down. Eventually the tyrant despaired, gave up and vanished. The agate stone remains and is a most curious thing. Known as The Bulla, it was lost for many years, eventually re-emerging in the 18C. It had its own curing properties, especially for use in cattle and was on one occasion used rather too freely:

This bowl is noted for curing diseases but was taken away by an old lady from Macroom, who gave it to farmers for the cure of their cattle. It remained one time for three nights in succession at her home, but the inmates got frightened by hearing unseemly noises from the room occupied by it. The third night the noise resembled the roaring of thunder. The following morning she hastily took it back to its former place, and placed it reverently in the hole, from which it is impossible to extract it since. This happened within writers memory.

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The bulla is now firmly embedded in a wall of the medieval church. It is round, smooth and dark and is considered to have healing properties of its own. It is also one of the stations in the round, the pilgrim slipping their hand into the cavity to rub the smooth cold ball.

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It reminds me of the bulley stones associated with St Macadaw’s Well in North Kerry. Very like the O Herlihys, the Corridans are the traditional keepers of relics associated with the holy well, dedicated to St Erc or St Macadaw. These include two flat stones called the bulley stones. One has now been cemented onto a pillar near the ruins of the ancient church but the other remains in safe keeping of the family and is traditionally used to activate the holy well.

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Plague

St Gobnait did have her gentler side of course. Once when her community was stricken with plague, she prayed and fasted and forbade the epidemic to enter her domain:

Another miracle of St. Gobnait relates to Gurteen-na-Plagha, in the parish of Ballyvourney. The literal meaning of the name is the ‘little field of the plague’ and it is so called because of a dreadful pestilence that raged in the neighborhood in the time of our saint. She made the Sign of the Cross over the stricken district, with the result that the plague disappeared and never again visited it, no matter how fiercely it might be raging elsewhere.

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The site of the Gurteen na Plagha, little field of the plague, is just outside Ballyvourney in the townland of Tonn Lain, Toonlane. The plaque in St Abbey’s Well Kilshannig refers to this event.

I wondered if the plague may have been smallpox and Gobnait’s healing powers directly transferred to the statue.

Ravine of the Deaf, An Cumar Bodghar

When St Gobnait’s mentor St Abbán died (at an exceptionally ancient age of 300) the caoine, (traditional lamenting), was raised. One of the nun’s was ill and worried that the noise would disturb her, St Gobnait managed to surround the sick woman with a silent space which still maintains this miraculous quality :

Tradition says that St. Abban died at Ballyvourney, and that, at the moment of his death one of the nuns of St. Gobnait happened to be so ill that the holy abbess was afraid the ‘keen’ or death-wail raised at his funeral might disturb the poor invalid. As usual, in any difficulty, she had recourse to prayer, so that, wonderful to relate, not one sound of all the crying and wailing outside penetrated the sick-room. The stone St Gobnait knelt on as she prayed is still pointed out by the good folk of Ballyvourney who stoutly maintain that anyone standing upon it would not hear even the loudest clap of thunder were it ever so near.

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Incidentally St Abbán is buried a quarter of a mile away in the woods at a remarkable site where there is a shrine and holy well.

Metalworking

St Gobnait is also patron saint of metalworkers as well as bees. As has been mentioned her name is a derivative of Gabha which means smith. When the ground was being prepared for the erection of her statue in the early 1950s, an archaeological excavation was conducted, focusing on what is known as Gobnait’s House. Lead by Professor MJ O Kelly, the circular building was excavated and found to contain evidence of iron smelting in the form of pits, iron slag and charcoal. There were also domestic items amongst the finds including a glass bead, whetstones, a spindle whorl and quern stones. He dated the house cautiously between the 6th and 13 centuries, veering on the side of the earlier date.

So there we have her – a remarkable woman who devoted herself to the care of her community, especially the poor and the sick and who wouldn’t hesitate to stand up to oppressors of any kind; the benefactor of beekeepers and smiths, and aficionado of white deer. Wherever you go in Ballyvourney you will see references to the patron saint, one who is still much loved and respected and an important part of people’s lives.

Go mbeannaí Dia dhuit, a Ghobnait Naofa, 
Go mbeannaí Muire dhuit agus beannaím féin duit, 
Is chugat-sa a thánag ag gearán mo scéil leat,
Is ag d’iarraigh leigheas ar son Dé ort.

May God bless you,
Holy Saint Gobnait,
And may Mary bless you,
And I bless you myself.
For it is to you that I come,
To plead my case with you,
To request my healing,
From you on God’s part.