Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mura
MURA (d. 645?), Irish saint, called by Irish writers Múra Othaine or Múra Fhothaine, and in Latin Murus or Muranus, was son of Feradach, who was fifth in descent from Niall Naighiallaigh, king of Ireland, and was born in Tireoghain, in the north of Ulster. Derinill was his mother's name. She is called in Irish Cethirchicheach, a cognomen expressing the not uncommon variety of structure in which a pair of supplementary mammæ are present, and was also the mother by another husband of St. Domangurt. Mura rounded the abbey of Fahan, on the eastern shore of Lough Swilly, and was the first of a succession of learned abbots [see Maelmura]. He received a grant of lands from Aodh Uairidhneach, king of Ireland (605-12), who had made a pilgrimage to Fahan before his accession, and when the king was dying in 612 he sent for Mura to receive his confession. The saint reproved him for desiring to enslave the Leinstermen, the countrymen of so holy a person as St. Brigit, and administered the last sacraments to him (Fragment of Annals, copied by MacFirbis from a manuscript of Gillananaemh MacÆdhagain, Irish Archæological Society, 1860, ed. O'Donovan, pp. 12-16). A poem on the life of St. Columcille, of which only a few lines are extant, begiuning ‘Rugadh i ngartan da dheoin,’ is attributed to Mura. No early authority for this exists, but it is quoted by Maghnus O'Donnell [q. v.] in 1532 as universally accepted in his time, and Colgan in 1645 states that it had been preserved till modern times with other compositions of the saint (Acta Sanctorum Hiberniæ, p. 587) at Fahan. The staff and the bell of the saint were also preserved there, and both still exist—the staff in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, and the bell in the collection of Lord Otho Fitzgerald (Ulster Journal of Archæology, vol. i.; Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, vol. v.) He died about 645, and 12 March was the day observed at Fahan as that of his death. He became the patron saint of the Cinel Eoghain and the O'Neills, and MacLochlainns used to take solemn oaths upon his staff. The foundation of the church of Banagher, co. Londonderry, was also his, and the present very ancient church is probably the immediate successor of the one built by him. His tomb, a sandstone structure of great antiquity, with a rude vertical effigy, stands on the same hill as the church in the townland of Magheramore, and a handful of the sand near it is believed in the country to insure the holder from drowning. At Banagher the identity of the saint has been lost, and Reeves (Primate Colton's Visitation, p. 107) prints his name Muriedach O'Heney, which is an attempt to represent the native pronunciation. The guttural is a modern addition, often made to terminal vowels in Ulster, and O'Heney is not a patronymic, but the genitive case with aspirated initial sound of the name of the saint's abbey of Fathan. The identity of the founder of Fahan with the founder of Banagher has not been determined before. The abbot of Fahan is always spoken of in Irish writings as 'comharba Mura,' successor of Mura.
[Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. O'Donovan, ii. 906; Colgan's Acta Sanct. Hiberniæ, i. 587; Bollandists' Acta Sanctorum, March 12; W. Reeves's Adamnan's Life of St. Columba; W. Reeves's Acts of Archbishop Colton, 1850, note, p. 106; Martyrology of Donegal, p 74; J. O'Donovan's Three Fragments of Irish Annals, 1860, p. 10; J. H. Todd's Irish Version of the Historia Britonum, 1848; Petrie's Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, 1845, p. 454, and Dunraven's Notes on Irish Architecture, for Drawings of the saint's tomb and church of Banagher; Ulster Journal of Archæology, i. 270, and Proc. of Royal Irish Academy, v. 206, as to bell and staff; local inquiries by the writer at Banagher and Inishowen.]