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Christmas Eve in the Gulag

Miss Tilney Tattles 3

This was in our back garden this morning. I captured it on camera while Big Sister was having some crisis with her coffee machine. It is not a good likeness largely due to her never having cleaned the glass in this door but I do hope it is not Mr Wickham come back. You will know, I expect, all the trouble Mr Wickham caused last time for Great Aunt Jane put it in a novel and told the whole world.

Yours &c.

Eleanor Tilney

Could it be?

Grump

Apparently people won’t buy a house unless it looks like a photo shoot from ‘Homes and Gardens’ magazine. If they see a pile of books, a tea cup or your favourite photograph of an Orthodox monk they become unable to visualise themselves in the place and your sale is lost. Such is the impression given on my estate agent’s website.

Luckily no-one came because I forgot to tidy my desk and Miss Darcy insisted on being around and, well, Miss Darcy has a neurotic bald patch where she over grooms so unlike Miss Tilney she isn’t a candidate for the front cover of ‘Ideal Cat’ magazine and would doubtless scare off potential buyers.

Not a cat you'd buy a house from.

St Itha

ST ITHA OF KILEEDY

Itha’s name has undergone many corruptions leading, as is usual in hagiography, to the multiplication of saints and confusion of vitae. We know her as Itha, Ida, Ita, Deirdre, Dorothy, Sitha, Mida and Mide. William of Worcester thought her a martyr and the several dedications in Cornwall give the impression she was a wandering Irish saint but in reality she spent her whole religious life, from youth to death, in Killeedy which is, of course, Kell of Ida. In both Ireland and Scotland one finds many place names beginning with ‘Kil’ indicating that at some time a holy man or woman lived there.

From ‘Lives of the British Saints’, S.Baring Gould and J.Fisher.

Itha was a daughter of the royal house of the Deisi, who had been expelled from Meath in the third century by Cormac Mac Airt, and obliged to find new homes. One portion of the tribe, under Eochaid, crossed into South Wales and settled there, but another migrated to the South of Ireland and occupied the present county of Waterford.

Itha was the child of Cenfoelad Mac Cormac, and Necht, and was lineally descended from Conn of the Hundred Battles, King of Ireland 123-157.

Her birth took place about 480, and as her parents were Christians, she was baptised, and given the name of Dairdre, which was Latinized into Dorothea. She acquired the nickname of Ith later, on account of her “thirst” for the living waters of heavenly truth.

She had two sisters whose names have been preserved: Necht, who married Beoan, and became the mother of S. Mochoemog or Pulcherius; and Fina, who is numbered among the saints. In the life of S. Fintan of Dunbleisc (Doone in Limerick) we are told that his mother’s sister was S. Fina, but this mother and Fina are said to be daughters of Artgail.

From an early age Itha had made up her mind to embrace the monastic life. This was not at all in accordance with her father’s purpose, who had made arrangements for her marriage. When Itha learned his intentions, she refused food and “fasted against” her own father, who was by this means compelled to give way.

She then received the veil at some church not specified, in the present county of Waterford, and departed into the territory of the Hy Luachra or Hy Connaill, that is to say, into the present county of Limerick, where she settled under the slopes of the Mullaghareick chain, at a place called Cluain-Credhail, that is now known as Killeedy, or the cell of Ida. She had several devout women as companions, and there she formed a college.

It seems from elsewhere in the narrative that Itha underwent formation with Abbess Cainreach at Clonburren in Roscommon.

One day Aengus, Abbot of Clonmacnois, sent a priest to celebrate the Eucharist and communicate the congregation of S. Itha. Afterwards the holy woman bade her disciples to fold up and pack the vestments in which the priest had celebrated, and send them with his baggage as a present to Clonmacnois. The priest demurred; he had been instructed by his Abbot to receive nothing in return for the service rendered. Then Itha quieted his scruples by saying, “Long ago, your Abbot Aengus visited the convent of the holy virgin Chinreach. I was there at the time. Chinreach washed the feet of Aengus, and wiped them with a towel. I at the time was by, kneeling and holding part of the towel, and I helped to dry his feet. Tell him that. He will be pleased, and not reject the little present now offered with all my heart.”

The people of the Hy Connaill area in which Itha had chosen to live asked her, through their Chiefs, to be their tribal saint, to bless their undertakings and curse their enemies (!) which is not that very different from the office once performed by the druids. She was also to take on the education of their daughters. S.Baring Gould and J. Fisher state, “To impress the imaginations of the rude natives, she had to recourse to great austerities, and acquired the repute of being able to perform miracles, and to have the gift of prophecy.”

She was also something of a matchmaker. Having ascertained that her sister, Necht, who was among the devout women who lived with her, had no vocation to the monastic life she arranged for her to marry the skilled carpenter, Boean, who was constructing the convent’s church. Necht thereby became the mother of a saint. She refused all gifts that would make her community wealthy, even to the point of calling for water to wash the filth of her hands after being given gold which she returned telling the giver to choose between using it for display or relieving distress. Itha is usually remembered by her epithet, “foster-mother of all the saints of Ireland” usually followed by a long list of chronologically impossible names. One that does occur in her life though is S. Brendan whose care she was given by S. Erc (although some sources say the dates again make this unlikely). It was to S. Brendan that she said the three things most pleasing to God were: resignation to His will, simplicity and large heartedness.

Once another Abbess brought all her maidens to Itha after a theft occurred among them. On arrival they all kissed Itha except the one who was accused. Itha bade her kiss her, saying her face proclaimed her innocence, and in private informed the Abbess which of her nuns was actually guilty. On another occasion, the foster-mother of S. Colman of Oughval, arrived with her sickly daughter asking Itha to perform a miracle on the girl; Itha replied that if she were restored to health her damnation was assured but if she remained ill she would be close to God. In this way she avoided having to attempt and fail at a miracle. It also happened that one of her own nuns ran away and became a maidservant to a druid in Connaught. Itha sent S. Brendan to find out what had happened to the girl and by his own compassion and Itha’s prayers he brought her home again together with the child she had borne.

In her old age Itha was said to have suffered from a beetle which invading her body devoured her sides and grew to the size of a pig which is simply a horrible but understandable description of a tumour. Like so many people today Itha died of cancer. She was nursed by her nuns whom she had trained to nurse others bearing her pain with great patience and was lucid enough to bless her own community and the clergy of her tribe before she died.

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St Judas Maccabeus

Seasonal incongruence

Lady Russell is in her room humming ‘Thine Be The Glory, Risen Conquering Son’. Even a Presbyterian atheist should know that isn’t an Advent carol.

Resa

Before I leave the office...

Please pray for Resa. Her Khouria has been writing regular updates. According to the latest her oxygen saturation levels are dropping seriously and the doctors say there is no more to be done.

There isn't even a full moon...

On Saturday Morrison's supermarket was selling green leaves labelled 'suitable for vegetarians'.

Yesterday Owen the Ochlophobist had to explain to someone that he is occasionally facetious.

Today I got an email from someone pointing out that projectors help people concentrate on God and that calling a person a wally for using one to display rewritten, bowdlerised hymns was not charitable. (I know it wasn't charitable but it was one of those occasions where truth triumphed over kindness).

I suppose next some dear soul will tell me that Marks was a Jew who had a market stall in Petticoat Lane and is not actually a grey tom cat from Hertfordshire.

Has the whole world run quite mad?