We pray for the monks on High Island

High island pitching tossing, appearing disappearing,

in the dragon waves angered, now awake, risen from their silent deep.

I saw its sail, Féichín’s church rising falling through the flailing rain,

and him, a cross, arms extended; eyes, ovals of pain, elongated upwards;

mouth, grotesque black hollow gouged deep in weathered shale.

We prayed for them: six monks floundering in the ocean’s thrashing jaws;

that the weight of their sins would not drag them to their deaths;

that the light of God would shine and the saint would climb, extend his hands,

a rope, pull the others from the cleansing rage; that the light would split the sky,

send Lucifer’s demons  scurrying out beyond the margins of the sea.

St Féichín arrives on High Island

It is recounted in the Annals of the Ciarraige Aí that St Féichín, having been  invited back to Connacht to convert the people of Omey, one day said to the elders that he had experienced a vision in which God directed him to build a church on an island out beyond; where the fires of hell nightly sinks down into the sea.

It is said that he led a group of monks followed by the people of Omey down to the shore, from where he proceeded to walk into the tide. The monks followed him, wading waist-deep into water, beseeching him to turn back, but he refused. Never once looking back, never once turning his face from a point somewhere out on the horizon, he ploughed onward into waves, leaving his half-bodied, distraught followers looking after him with tears, hidden by the spray, streaming down their faces.

It was at the precise moment his head disappeared beneath the waves that they saw him lifted out the water, fully upright and heading still in the direction he had chosen.  He walked on rounded, smooth rocks that seemed to materialise with each step he took, and in this way walked onward, out from Omey, even though it was a rough and unpleasant sea.

They watched him grow small and smaller as he walked over the waves; many felt he was leaving them, but a cry went up and crowds ran to the currachs, dragged them out onto the water and followed him.

Four miles he walked, through surging seas and blinding spray. The currachs following him, tossed light as splinters on the waves, voices travelling fitfully over the din, spume carried horizontally into the faces of the monks and oarsmen. Rain was hail in their faces; cloud, sky and ocean their only visible destination; but they kept rowing.

It is believed that when Féichín arrived at the sheer face of High Island, a stone leapt into the air so he stepped directly onto dry land.

The weather eased, a hemisphere of calm settled on the grass-roofed rocks. And as the currachs entered into the shelter, they saw him on a cliff-top, a five-pointed star exulting in the emerging evening light, the sun from behind the clouds:fingers of God radiating around him.

The oars lifted from the waters drained streams like spittle back into the sea; gannets were easing along the thermals, and Féichín had the eyes of Omey on him.

Saint Féichín's Prayer on High Island *

Between the troubled sea and fickle sky,

this island barely more than raft,

this church a mast,

and you, my Lord, Jesus Christ, the sail

delivering us from monsters

that daily beset us in our voyage.

I strap myself to this stone, consecrated

with your cross and invite my penance:

flails lifted from the swell, nails

You spit to cleanse us.

I present myself, a rag on a thorn,

a cold flame awaiting the warmth of Your forgiveness.


*Saint Féichín founded a monastery on this tiny, remote island off the Galway coast in 634. There are some photographs at  http://www.earlychristianireland.net/Counties/galway/high_island/