Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/226

 1 94 Collectanea.

observance at the Reek, followed the ancient track, the Togher (Tochar) Phadruig, eastward.

The Liagaun, or pillar stone, at Foghill {Coille Fochlud) was alleged to have been erected by the saint to commemorate his baptism of King " Awley," Amalgaidh. Readers of the saint's confession will recall the touching tale of his vision of the people of " the Wood of Fochlud near the western ocean " calling to him to help them (like St. Paul's vision of the " Man of Mace- donia "), and how he writes " after very many years the Lord had granted to them according to their cry." It is most interesting to find an authentic event of the early fifth century remembered at the spot by the peasantry down to the present time.

SS. Enda and Brecan.

In a paper like this, discursive of very necessity, it is hard to get any plan giving fully satisfactory results. So, in arranging the notes upon saints, the topographical plan proves nearly impossible, and in west Connacht, far more than in Co. Clare, the chronological plan breaks down, for many of the saints are dateless, and some even unnamed in the records. This is hardly wonderful, the early Irish named churches after their founders not after the more imposing saints, so many an ob- scure, if holy, anchorite or priest had no other commemoration than the traditional place-name in which his own found a component.

Of historic saints we find two of the generation after St. Patrick connected with the great Isle of Aran — Bresal, or Brecan, son of Eochu Bailldearg, a Dalcassian Prince, baptized as an infant (along with Father Cairthenn Fionn,^ the first Christian prince) by St. Patrick, at Singland, near Limerick. It is hard to separate his legends from that of Enda. Very briefly, for I have given the Clare version at greater length in these pages, ^ let me recapitulate. He founded Kilbrecan (a very primitive oratory and well), Doora and Clooney, near Ennis, and Too- mullin, where his name survived at the holy well, just opposite

1 Tripartite Life of St. Patrick (Rolls series), p. 206. - Vol. xxiv. p. 204.