Irish Melodies/Oh! haste and leave this sacred isle
SECOND NUMBER.
How dear to me the hour when day-light dies,
And sunbeams melt along the silent sea.
ST. SENANUS AND THE LADY.
St. Senanus*[1].
"Oh! haste and leave this sacred isle,
"Unholy bark, ere morning smile;
"For on thy deck, tho' dark it be,
"A female form I see;
"And I have sworn this sainted sod
"Shall ne'er by woman's feet be trod!"
The Lady.
"Oh! Father, send not hence my bark,
"Through wint'ry winds and billows dark;
"I come with humble heart to share
"Thy morn and evening prayer;
"Nor mine the feet, oh! holy Saint,
"The brightness of thy sod to taint."
The Lady's prayer Senanus spurn'd;
The winds blew fresh, the bark return'd.
But legends hint, that had the maid
Till morning's light delay'd,
And given the saint one rosy smile,
She ne'er had left his lonely isle.
- ↑ In a metrical life of St. Senanus, which is taken from an old Kilkenny MS. and may be found among the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae we are told of his flight to the island of Scattery, and his resolution not to admit any woman of the party; he refused to receive even a sister saint, St. Cannera, whom an angel had taken to the island, for the express purpose of introducing her to him. The following was the ungracious answer of Senanus, according to his poetical biographer:
Cui Praesul, quid faeminis
Commune est cum monachis?
Nec te nec ullam aliam
Admittemus in insulam.
See the Acta Sant. Hib. Page 610.According to Dr. Ledwich, St. Senanus was no less a personage than the River Shannon; but O'Connor, and other Antiquarians, deny this metamorphose indignantly.