Things We Measure

St. Gobnait's statue

This week and next are very times for feast days in the village and the area.  This past week, besides being my birthday was also the feast day of St. Brigid (Lá Bríd), or St. Bríd as she’s known in Irish.  She’s the patron saint of Ireland in many ways (sorry St. Patrick), being  the Irish equivalent of Mary and the subject of veneration at many wells and  other sites around the country.  Her feast day (also Imbolc in the pre-Christian calendar) signals the beginning of spring, the time of lambing as well as the time to ask for health and prosperity in the coming agricultural year.  

In this area there are still many customs associated with St. Brigid.   In schools and other places and in some homes many make the St. Brigid’s cross out of rushes.  Since I have rushes in my  meadow I just step out the door and cut 16 lengths and have a go.  Some years though, I’ve made them down at the library with a local woman  who taught the cross making.  
Besides making crosses, many older people around here hang out a bit of
cloth or ribbon the night before the feast day so that when St. Brigid passes
overhead she will bless the cloth.  The next day, the feast day, the cloth is brought in and kept for when it  might be needed for healing.  
 
Even more important in the village is the feast day of St. Gobnait or St. Abbey as she’s known in English.  She is the patron saint of the parish and the area.   She arrived in the mid 6th century, travelling through on the look out for a sign that would tell her where she should settle and start her religious community.   When she arrived in this area she saw 9 white harts  knew that was the sign and she should settle here.  In the religious community she started she had beehives and became famous for the healing the honey from those hives provided.   Legend has it that she sent her army of bees to defeat enemies who threatened the area.  

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St. Gobnait's Well

Her grave is in the old churchyard cemetery, as is a statue and a heavy iron?  ball inserted in the church wall ruins.  Just down from the church ruins is a well dedicated to St. Gobnait that is full of clouties and other items invoking her blessing and healing. 
Each of these sites feature in various
religious “rounds” or ritual circling while saying certain prayers that is done throughout the year to any devout person who wants to do it.     

In the new church in the village itself resides an ancient statue of St. Gobnait.   It’s about a 15 inches tall I think and is only taken out twice a year:
on the feast day and in July when they have the mass at the cemetery for
her.   St. Gobnait’s feastday is 11 February.  Many will descend on the village church to the three masses and the ritual measuring of the ancient statue. People line up and with a ribbon provided “measure” the statue in various places.  The ribbon, blessed by this action, is to be kept for healing. It’s a ritual that many look forward to.

Measuring took on another meaning for me this past week  too.  My husband and I called down to our neighbour to return a book and take them some muffins.  One of the family hasn’t been that well so we thought we would look in on them.  We were discussing various stories about the person, Peter, who lived here and his many siblings (11 altogether who were now all dead and gone.  The last one, a daughter died last  year.  I had some books that
originally had been in the house given to me from the neighbour.  He’d found them when he was cleaning out the place after Peter died.  In the course of our discussion he brought out something else he’d found while cleaning the place.  It was a beaten metal box with a few holes (rust/rats?) chewed in the side.  He opened it up and withdrew this massive measuring chain that had a handle on the end and little brass tags hanging down and certain intervals.  “Backalong” apparently it was illegal too take drink in a pub on a Sunday if you were a local.  You were permitted if you were a "traveller."   To be classed as a traveller you had to live at least 3 miles from the pub.  This chain was used by the guards (the police) to measure the distance from the pub to a home of anyone caught with liquor on their breath.   As Peter was one for the drink (as they say) he seemed to have his own  measuring chain to show he lived 3 miles from the village pub (only just I’d  say). 

“Chains” were an official form of measurement my husband assured me along with my neighbour.  They both recalled there were something like 22 “chains” to a mile and a “chain” was so much standard length.  I can’t remember the exact number, but I know it wasn’t on my American  copybook at school like it was on both of theirs. 
 
I found it an amazing piece of history there in that beat up metal box and thinking of the various ways we’ve measured things in the  past.  Measuring distance to be free to take a drink, “measuring” a statue to receive a healing blessing.   No doubt Peter would have felt the drink a blessing on a wet Sunday afternoon.

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Statue of St. Gobnait.

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