Virgin Saints and Martyrs

by S. Baring-Gould

S. Itha was a shoot of the royal family of the Nandesi, in the present county of Waterford. Her father’s name was Kennfoelad, and her mother’s was Nect. They were Christians, as appears from the fact of S. Itha having been baptised in childhood.

She was born about 480, and probably at an early date received the veil “in the Church of God of the clan.”

Unfortunately we have not the life of S. Itha in a very early form; it comes to us sadly corrupted with late fables foisted in to magnify the miraculous powers of the saint.

She moved to the foot of Mount Luachra, in Hy Conaill, and founded the monastery of Cluain Credhuil, now Killeedy, in a wild and solitary region, backed by the mountains of Mullaghareirk, and on a stream that is a confluent of the Deel, which falls into the Shannon at Askaton.

The chief of the clan or sept of Hy Conaill offered her a considerable tract of land for the support of her establishment, but she refused to receive more than was sufficient for a modest garden.

Let us try to get some idea of what one of these monasteries was like.

In the first place a ditch and a bank were drawn round the space that was to be occupied, and the summit of the bank was further protected by a palisade of stakes with osier wattling. In such places as were stony, and where no earthwork could well be made, in place of a bank, there was a wall.

Within the enclosure were a number of beehive-shaped cells, either of wattle or of stone and turf. Certainly the favourite style of building was with wood; but of course all such wooden structures have perished, whereas some of those of stone have been preserved. There were churches, apparently small, and a refectory, bakehouses, and a brewery and storehouses.

Outside the defensive wall of enclosure lived the retainers of the abbey. Where an abbot or abbess was head of an ecclesiastical tribe, he or she was bound to find land for each household: nine furrows of arable land, nine of bog, nine of grass-land, and as much of forest. As the population increased, a secular or an ecclesiastical chief was obliged to obtain an extension of territory, or would be held to have forfeited his claims as a chief. This led to incessant feud among the Celtic princes; it forced the saints to be continually striving to obtain fresh grants of land and make fresh settlements. When there was no more chance of obtaining land in Ireland, they sent swarms to Britain and to Brittany, to found colonies there, under the jurisdiction of the saint. This explains the way in which the Celtic saints were incessantly moving about. They were forced to do so to extend their lands so as to find farms for their vassals.

A very terrible story is told of the condition of affairs in Ireland in 657. The population of the island had increased to such an extent that the chiefs could not find land enough for the people. Dermot and Blaithmac, the kings, summoned an assembly of clergy and nobles to discuss the situation and consider a remedy. They concluded that the “elders” should put up prayer to the Almighty to send a pestilence, “to reduce the number of the lower class, that the rest might live in comfort.” S. Fechin of Fore, on being consulted, approved of this extraordinary petition. And the prayer was answered from heaven, but the vengeance of God fell mainly on the nobles and clergy, for the Yellow Plague which ensued, which swept away at least a third of the population, fell with special heaviness on the nobles and clergy, of whom multitudes, including the two kings and S. Fechin of Fore, were carried off.