Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/235

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day another abbot, Luighbc, of unknown date, is also venerated. There is no tradition of Colman's burial being at Bofin. He is very probably the patron of Tobercolman well and the Killeen graveyard near it on Achill. Four tyrants, " Coman, Aumin, Henry and Puca," are said to have broken off the arms of St. Colman's cross and burned the house of Dubhdara Omaille, probably the legendary father of Grania Uaile, or Grace O'Malley, about 15 50. St. Colman's well had gone dry in 1838 and people used to fill a hollow slab near it with water for the pattern} A Mr. Nangle, scathingly criticised by the Ordnance Survey Letters,'^ wrote of a " stone god of Achill," of which no one else ever heard. He was more famed for his controversial zeal than for accuracy of observation and very likely had heard of the " Neevoge " of Iniskea. So also Lady Wilde seems to have transferred some half-forgotten account of the wooden figure at Inishmurray when she tells of " Father Molosh a wooden idol on one of the Achill Islands it was a rude semblance of a human head." ^ Just where writers should have been most critical and careful they seem to be most careless and assertive.

St. Daimhoidh. — No legend of a saint was found by me on Clare Island. The holy well is not dedicated to St. Brigid but to her festival. St. Daimhoidh, a sainted lady, was rever- enced in Achill ; she had a church named Kildavnet on Achill Sound near the Omailles Castle, and the late seventeenth century maps show another Kildawnet on Achillbeg, at the great pro- montory fort of Dun Kilmore.^ There a venerable " killeen " graveyard, basin, stone and two low slab altars, heaped with white pebbles, are still to be seen, though the church has not left a foundation and the altars are supposed to be giants' graves.

St. Derbhile, another sainted lady, is venerated on the Mullet and in South Iniskea. She was of the reigning house of King

^ Onl. Survey Letleis, Mayo, vol. i. pp. 343-4. - Mayo, vol. i. p. 345.

'^Ancient Legends, etc. (Lady Wilde), vol. i. p. iii.

■* Proi. Roy. Jr. .4cad. vol. xxxi. part ii. (c), p. 65 ; Journal Roy. See. Antt. Jr. vol. xliv. p. 330.