Postal St Gobnait Drives Off Cattle Raiders with Bees

The second story Harry Clarke (1889-1931) recounts in his 1914 preliminary drawing for the St. Gobnait stained-glass window appears in the rectangular area at the base. Cattle-raiding was commonplace in Gaelic Ireland. Rival chieftains and their clansmen turned to cattle-raiding to deprive their enemies of food in wartime, to make hay as a political ploy in times of peace, and to avenge slights to their honor real or imagined as the occasion demanded. Poorer folk resorted to cattle-raiding simply to keep hunger at bay. When raiders hit Ballyvourney, however, they did not reckon on its resourceful and imaginative abbess! St. Gobnait raised bees. Bees provided honey as a sweetener for food and beverages. Honey was believed to have medicinal value and was used by the saint to treat wounds and illnesses. Beehives provided wax for the candles used in the liturgy as well as in everyday life. And bees even served as a model for the nuns living together harmoniously in community and as a symbol of the active Christian life by being industrious. Confronted by the cattle raiders, St. Gobnait released her bees. The cattle raiders scattered in a panic! + Detail of a stained glass window design of St. Gobnait in pencil, pen and inks, and watercolor on board for Honan Chapel, University College, Cork, Ireland, by Harry Clarke, 1914, Collection of the Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, Public Domain. + St. Gobnait’s Feast: February 11