Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/321

 his swinging walk, powerful and sonorous voice, and frankness of speech rendered his personality impressive.



MÜNTZ, JOHN HENRY (fl. 1755–1775), painter, was of Swiss origin, and originally served in the French army. After the disbandment of his regiment he was found in the island of Jersey by (1708-1782) [q. v.], who brought him to England, and introduced him to Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill. Walpole employed him for some time as a painter and engraver. He also recommended him to his friends William Chute and others, and Müntz worked for some time at Chute's residence, The Vyne, near Basingstoke, where some of his paintings remain. Müntz painted chiefly Italian landscapes in a hard, cold manner, of which there were several examples at Strawberry Hill. He also copied pictures for Walpole. Together with Walpole he practised the art of encaustic painting, as revived by Caylus, and they projected a joint publication on the subject. This was checked, however, by a quarrel arising from an intrigue of Müntz with one of Walpole's servants, whom he subsequently married. The incident led to his dismissal from Walpole's service. He then came to London, where in 1760 he published 'Encaustic, or Count Caylus's Method of Painting in the Manner of the Ancients,' with an etching on the title-page by himself. In 1762 he exhibited a painting in encaustic at the Society of Artists, and again in 1763. After that there are no traces of him, but he may have gone to Holland, and is probably identical with J. H. Müntz, engineer and architect, who in 1772 compiled a work with drawings on ancient vases, which remains in manuscript in the South Kensington Art Library.



MURA (d. 645?), Irish saint, called by Irish writers Múra Othaine or Múra Fhothaine, and in Latin Murus or Muranus, was son of Feradach, who was fifth in descent from Niall Naighiallaigh, king of Ireland, and was born in Tireoghain, in the north of Ulster. Derinill was his mother's name. She is called in Irish Cethirchicheach, a cognomen expressing the not uncommon variety of structure in which a pair of supplementary mammæ are present, and was also the mother by another husband of St. Domangurt. Mura rounded the abbey of Fahan, on the eastern shore of Lough Swilly, and was the first of a succession of learned abbots [see ]. He received a grant of lands from Aodh Uairidhneach, king of Ireland (605-12), who had made a pilgrimage to Fahan before his accession, and when the king was dying in 612 he sent for Mura to receive his confession. The saint reproved him for desiring to enslave the Leinstermen, the countrymen of so holy a person as St. Brigit, and administered the last sacraments to him (Fragment of Annals, copied by MacFirbis from a manuscript of Gillananaemh MacÆdhagain, Irish Archæological Society, 1860, ed. O'Donovan, pp. 12-16). A poem on the life of St. Columcille, of which only a few lines are extant, begiuning ‘Rugadh i ngartan da dheoin,’ is attributed to Mura. No early authority for this exists, but it is quoted by [q. v.] in 1532 as universally accepted in his time, and Colgan in 1645 states that it had been preserved till modern times with other compositions of the saint (Acta Sanctorum Hiberniæ, p. 587) at Fahan. The staff and the bell of the saint were also preserved there, and both still exist—the staff in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, and the bell in the collection of Lord Otho Fitzgerald (Ulster Journal of Archæology, vol. i.; Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, vol. v.) He died about 645, and 12 March was the day observed at Fahan as that of his death. He became the patron saint of the Cinel Eoghain and the O'Neills, and MacLochlainns used to take solemn oaths upon his staff. The foundation of the church of Banagher, co. Londonderry, was also his, and the present very ancient church is probably the immediate successor of the one built by him. His tomb, a sandstone structure of great antiquity, with a rude vertical effigy, stands on the same hill as the church in the townland of Magheramore, and a handful of the sand near it is believed in the country to insure the holder from drowning. At Banagher the identity of the saint has been lost, and Reeves (Primate Colton's Visitation, p. 107) prints his name Muriedach O'Heney, which is an attempt to represent the native pronunciation. The guttural is a modern addition, often made to terminal vowels in Ulster, and O'Heney is not a