Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/234

 202 Colleclaiica.

and chained him. The enemy feared to meet St. Roc face to face and sprang over the mountain dragging at the chain which cut the narrow pass in the subsequent contest. The cell is marked by a graveyard with some rude stations or heaps of stones. I have not heard this legend in Connemara, so give it merely on " book-authority." ' It was probably made for tourists.

St. Leo, like St. Roc, finds no place in the Calendars or Lives of the Saints. He is reverenced on Inishark. There are two slabs at his church, one with a carving of a bishop with a chalice, the other, called Leac Leo, has the reputed mark of a footprint made as he stepped down from the church. His cave, Uaimh Leo, and his well are shown. His bell is noted by Roderic O'Flaherty in 1684 as made of brass or bronze, and it was cut up into pieces for relics or amulets ; some were extant in 1846. Like the holy stone on Caher Island it was carried off by sailors (French, in one version), who took it to the Bay of Biscay, but had to return and restore it, being pursued by storms (or threw it into the sea in a storm, when it returned and was found on the shore by seaweed-gatherers). I heard this variant legend on Inisturk. The natives of Shark, after performing their rounds and praying at the well, sometimes conclude their devotions by sleeping in the clochan — one of the stations is an ice-borne granite boulder with a " bullaun," or basin, ground into it. The saint's day is observed on April nth.

St. Colman. — Readers of the Venerable Bede's history will remember how, in a.d. 667, Colman, the saintly Abbot of Lindis- farne, for thirty-seven years a Columban monk of lona, entered into the Pascal controversy. King Oswy decided in favour of the Roman observance, and Colman retired to lona and then to Inishbofinde, the island of the White Cow. He also founded a monastery at Mayo. A late church marks the site of his monastery on Bofin, the only early relic being a large basin stone. There were two wells, but Tobercolman, though tra- ditionally remembered, could not be located even in 1839. St. Colman died a.d. 674 or 676 ; his day is August 8th. His successor, Beretan, died Jan. 14th, a.d. 711 or 712. On that

^ Ireland (^\r. and Mis. S. C. Hall), vol. iii. p. 4S9.