The Lost Work of Saint Fiona O’Shniggy

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the celebration of the first St. Fiona Day back in 1997. St. Fiona lived in Ireland during the 10^th century. She is best known for popularizing the constellation Orion in song and verse. Following her untimely death at the age of 23, she was canonized and became the patron saint of drunkards, poets and stargazers. She is celebrated on April 1.

It was previously thought that all the songs she had written had been destroyed following her death, but Professor Charlotte Gaskell recently uncovered one song that she has attributed to St. Fiona. Gaskell is the world’s preeminent expert on St. Fiona. She unearthed the song when going through artifacts related to the life of the Pope who was responsible for Fiona’s canonization. The man had met Fiona in his youth, and Gaskell had hoped to glean information about the mysterious saint by studying his effects. In her search, Gaskell came across an unusual scrap of paper with a few lines of verse in a scrawl that did not match any of the other writing in the collection. The small piece had been tucked inside an illuminated manuscript that belonged to the Pope. On the back of the scrap was a note in a different hand that simply said, “Fiona O.” The writing matched that of the Pope, and Gaskell was able to date the scrap back to the time that Fiona was thought to be alive.

Gaskell had quite a task deciphering the text as it turned out to be written in code. As Gaskell explains:

Given the risk Fiona took in writing in secret, it is understandable that she would resort to code to protect her work. But what’s curious about this is that there is no indication that her destroyed work was written in code. The existence of this coded piece of verse makes me think there may be more out there waiting to be discovered. This is truly a remarkable find for Fiona scholars and enthusiasts.

No sooner had Gaskell broken the code than she had all the confirmation she needed that she was in fact looking at original work by Fiona O’Shniggy. It was all there in the subject matter. The short bit of verse was about Fiona’s beloved constellation, Orion.

Fiona was known for her love of studying the heavens. In her mind, each point of life represented a person who had died. Of the few accounts we have of her life, we know that she would point to a particular star and tell someone that it represented someone she had lost. Gaskell theorizes that this is what led to her strong connection to stargazing. It was her attempt to connect to the stories of the past, and, in way, her ideas that the stars represented the past preceded human understanding that the light from stars really comes from years ago.

Up until this point, scholars have relied on the limited writings of others for a glimpse into the life of this remarkable saint. Now, this scrap of paper allows Fiona herself to speak through the shadows of history, and we are hearing her voice for the first time in hundreds of years.

Here, for the first time in English, are the words of the beloved saint:

Curious hunter in the night,
Always hungry for the fight.

Laid to rest amongst many a star.

Will life find me there?
Nestled in the quilt of light up in the air?

Though I wander, you are not far.

Up in the sky is where I look,
The words I write could fill a book.

Unfortunately that is where it ends. Gaskell is unsure of whether this is incomplete work by Fiona or if he rest of the poem was lost to time. It is Gaskell’s hope that she will find more writing. Until then, let St. Fiona inspire you to have a drink, look at the stars and write a poem.

As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.” St. Fiona herself was born out of coincidence: the retelling of a bad joke about the constellation Orion, late night discussion between two friends and vivid imaginations. By chance, these things combined in the perfect moment to give birth to St. Fiona. As with people like Kilgore Trout, Thursday Next and Charlotte Gaskell, St. Fiona exists in the world of fiction, but don’t tell her that. She thinks she is quite real, thank you very much!

Happy St. Fiona Day!

Ever since the first St. Fiona Day in 1997, my friends and I have celebrated this little known saint on April 1. While her day may coincide with April Fools’ Day, I assure you that she is no joke. One day back in 1997 when two young women were hanging out in their dorm room, the story of St. Fiona made itself known to them. Call it divine intervention or a whimsy of imagination, but that was the moment that St. Fiona Day was invented. This story is dedicated to Ann, the co-discoverer of St. Fiona. Here’s to our 19th year celebrating this day! May the spirit of St. Fiona inspire poems, stargazing & tasty beverages!

St. Fiona O’Shniggy of the Village Kincaid
Patron Saint of Drunkards, Poets & Stargazers
St. Fiona Day: April 1

St. Fiona O’Shniggy is the patron saint of drunkards, poets and stargazers. She lived during the tenth century in Ireland when she popularized the constellation Orion in song and verse. Unfortunately her songs have not survived over the centuries as they were destroyed shortly after her death at the tender age of 23. After her death, Fiona’s ideas were found to be against those held by the Catholic Church. This led to her eventual excommunication and the destruction of all of her work. Fiona wrote extensively in her journal about the equality that should exist between women and men. These private journals were found by her uncle shortly after her death. Unfortunately, he passed them on to the Catholic Church, thinking this is what Fiona would have wanted due to her extreme devotion to God. Although this is what led to the destruction of her writings, brief glimpses into Fiona’s life and ideas live on through the writings of her uncle. After handing over the journals to the church, he was so moved by his gifted niece that he put down his own thoughts on her writings in his journals and letters.

Fiona had learned to write in secret from her brother, who was four years her senior. Very few women were allowed to write at this time in Ireland. Ever since she was a child, Fiona was fascinated by everything around her in nature and in the human spirit. Fiona would often wander around at night, looking up at the stars, and Orion came to be her favorite constellation. In a letter to her brother she remarked, “Something so beautiful must surely be a gift from God.” She wrote seventeen poems and six songs about it. Several of her songs were turned into drinking songs by the locals that she helped when they passed out drunk in one of the many local pubs. As a devout Catholic and the daughter of two alcoholic parents, Fiona felt it was important to help those less fortunate than her (this of course included the town drunks).

As for her fascination with Orion, it eventually killed her at the age of 23. One night she was out wandering through an open field, admiring her favorite grouping of stars. She never saw the well below her feet, and fell down it. Nobody knows how long she was there. They found scratch marks on the side of the well like she had tried to get out. The most remarkable thing about the scene was the position of the body. Fiona’s head was tilted up as if to take one last glance from earth at Orion. The last that anyone heard from her was what she said to her brother before she left on that fateful night. She told him that she was going to look at her beautiful Orion that God had given to her and all the world.

Several years after her excommunication, a man that she knew when he was a child became Pope. He had remembered the wonderful soda bread that Fiona had made for him as well as her stimulating philosophical conversation, and he figured that maybe she was not as bad as the Catholic Church originally had said she was. His first official act was to see to Fiona’s canonization.

UPDATE : Want more about St. Fiona? Check out this April 2017 post, which includes part of a lost poem of St. Fiona and more details about her life.