Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/231

 Collectanea. 1 99

St. Cohiinba. — The great Apostle of the Hebrides and one of the three patrons of Ireland (died a.d. 597) was educated in Aran, and a lament on leaving that peaceful and holy retreat is attributed to him. In 1838 his name was substituted for that of St. Brecan in the story of the partition of Aran, but it was probably suggested by some ill-advised leading question of O'Donovan or some other worker for the Ordnance Survey. Probably, as in 1878, St. Brecan was nameless, save at his well and Templebrecan. In the 1 380 Life of St. Enda ^ we read that when that saint claimed half the island he was opposed by the abbots of the eight other monasteries. They fasted to learn the will of Heaven, and an angel appeared and presented Enda with a gospel and bell, which decided the contest in his favour. The very late Life of St. Columba, by O'Donnell, chief of his nation, in the early sixteenth century, gives a variant of the Dido legend. When Columba was a student in Aran he asked Enda for a field in which to found a monastery and was (of course) refused by the saint, who always figures as ungracious and jealous in the tales of all periods. He then asked for as much as his cowl could cover. This was granted, and the cowl began spreading till it had covered half the isle before the indignant Enda could even protest and repudiate a bargain so warped. The field was called Gort an Chochaill, or " cowl- field," which evidently originated this valueless tale. The Co. Clare folk merely recall the landing of the saint from Aran below his oratory at Crumlin in Burren. Almost the only local legend of St. Columba tells how he was so thin that when Enda and he fought for the half of the isle and Columba was thrown, the rock was marked by his ribs, the furrows being still shown, or at least till some fifteen years since. This tale was told in 1838.2 Farther north, the parish of Oughaval is dedicated to Columba, who is said to have foretold that it shall be devasted by the Rosuall, a formidable leviathan, probably a super-walrus.^ The church and graveyard on Inisturk is also

^ By MacGraidin, in Colgan, Atr^a SS. Hib. - O.S. Letters, Galway, vol. iii. p. 332.

^ The Book of Leiiister and the Dind Seiu/ias tell us much of the Rosuall (?Hross whal). It spouted at Murrisk, in Mayo, and a plague ensued, for