Saint Gobnait

By TOM DENNEHY

We celebrate the feast day of St Gobnait, a much loved saint, on February 11th. Her feast day has been added to the national calendar this year. She is among a group of Irish saints whose feast day has been given national rather than local recognition. She is very much revered especially by the people of Ballvourney who gather each year in great numbers to celebrate this great feast day.

St. Gobnait was born in Co. Clare during the 6th century and is believed to be the sister of St. Aban. She fled a family feud taking refuge in Inisheer, one of the Aran Islands where she set up a monastery. It was here an angel appeared to her and told her she should look for a place where she would find nine white deer grazing. She travelled south leaving her mark in parts of Waterford and Kerry until she found nine white deer grazing in a place now known as St Gobnait’s Wood in Ballyvourney. Saint Aban is said to have helped her with the foundation of the convent there and to have placed St. Gobnait over it as abbess.

Gobnait is patron saint of beekeepers as she kept bee hives and developed a lifelong affinity with them. She started a religious order and dedicated her days to helping the sick using her power of prayer and honey as a healing aid. She also used the bee hives to protect the people and when the local farmers came under attack, St. Gobnait set the bees on them and they quickly fled. One story tells of how she drove off a group of robbers by sending a swarm of bees after them and making them restore the cattle they had stolen. She is credited with saving the people of Ballvourney from the plague by drawing a line around the eastern borders of the parish with her stick beyond which the plague never came.

She is the protector and hope of the people for the last 1500 years and continues to be held in high esteem today and great affection is shown by the people who come from far and wide to ask for healing and do the rounds.

Special Indulgence

In 1601 Pope Clement V111 granted a special indulgence to those who, on St.Gobnait’s Day, visited the parish church, went to confession and communion, prayed for peace, conversions and the Pope’s intentions. This is of great significance this year in the Jubilee year of Hope, a year in which indulgences play such an important part.

Her feast day is celebrated each year on Feb. 11 in Ballyvourney Church with three masses celebrated commencing at 11 am, 4pm and 7.30pm. These are all very well attended and the medieval image of St. Gobnait, kept traditionally in a drawer in the church during the year, is venerated in the church on this day. The devotion is known as Tomhas Gobnatan. People bring ribbons with them and measure the statue from top to bottom and around its circumference. The ribbons are then brought home and used when people get sick or for some special blessing.

Doing the Rounds

Saint Gobnait’s Well in Ballyvourney is a religious complex built on the site of a 7th century convent. It consists of a holy well, two churches and a graveyard. It dates to the Middle Ages. It is associated with Saint Gobnait and today it is a place of veneration and pilgrimage, where people walk around the site reciting seven our Fathers, seven Hail Marys and seven Glories (Known locally as the rounds), praying for the dead and the sick. St. Gobnait’s Day and Whit Sunday are the two central dates of gathering. A life size statue of St. Gobnait was erected on the site in 1951 carved by the noted sculptor, Seamus Murphy.

Gobnait was originally a patron of ironworkers. Excavation of the church site in Ballyvourney yielded considerable evidence of ironworking.

Her feast day is also celebrated in Inis Orr (the Aran Islands) and in Dunchaoin in West Kerry. She is depicted on a stained glass window in The Honan Chapel in U.C.C. which was made by artist Harry Clarke in 1916. The bottom of the design features the story of Gobnait driving off the robbers. Many former churches were dedicated to St. Gobnait. The church in Keel, Castlemaine is named St. Gobnait.

Prayer to Saint Gobnait.

May God bless you, O Holy Gobnait. May Mary bless you and I bless you myself. To you I come complaining of my situation, and asking you for God’s sake, to grant me a cure.