Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/221

 Collectanea. 189

of Whitsuntide and he fasted on it from Shrove Saturday to Easter-even, withstanding the angehc message that his demands from Heaven were excessive. He was beset by black birds, but he chased them by psalms and ringing his bell, till the angel assured him that he should save as many persons from torment as could fill the space he could see. " Not far doth mine eye reach over the sea," objected the saint. " Then thou shalt have both sea and land," replied the angel. Still discontented the saint took blessing after blessing by force — one of these has a strange suggestion " that the Saxons shall not dwell in Ireland by consent or perforce so long as I abide in Heaven ! " When the saint had fasted against Heaven (like a creditor or postulant under the Irish law ^ fasted against a king) till all his demands were granted he left the " Reek " for Aghagower, where a round tower and early church remain and the ancient pilgrim's road extends to them from the " Reek."

In local belief the " Reek " was the spot where the saint assembled all the serpents and poisonous creatures in Ireland (except the gadfly, which had gained exemption by stinging Satan sorely) and drove them into the sea. Probably no story has spread so widely in time and space about our patron saint. 2 In the early Lives 13,000 " dark men with hideousness of teeth with the colour of death " appeared to him there and his chario- teer died and was buried between the " Reek " and the sea. Tirechan in his Annotations tells the same tale, but calls the man Totmael (or " entirely tonsured ") ; locally he is the saint's pupil, Mionnan, or Benen. The Leahar Brecc Homily says that the devils flung themselves into the sea and drowned themselves, so that no devil was seen in Ireland for seven years. ^ It is easy to see how the fiends became dragons, serpents in symbolism, and were taken to account for the absence of snakes in Ireland. The people showed the well on the summit of the lower ridge

'See Seiickas Mor (Rolls series) for legal "fasting," vol. i. pp. San, S3, 93) 99; ^'ol. iii. Book of Aiiill, pp. 71, 325.

- Save the late legend of his adopting the shamrock as the emblem of the Trinity — first found (so far as is known) before 1727, in Caleb Threlkeld's -Synopsis Stirpiwit Hibernicaruui, " a quaint and interesting botanical work."

" Otway, Tour in Connaught, p. 477, p. 322.