to be a genuine picture of his time, showing the chiefs living and exercising hospitality in their forts, the lesser gentry employing their sons to herd cattle on their detached pasturages, the boys, spear in hand, driving herds across the tidal creeks, and all the men commandeered for a raid against the neighbouring tribes of Corca Modruadh in Corcomroe. The tradition of the Kilrush district, collected by the Rev. John Graham before 1816,[1] said that Senán was born in Moylough (Maglacha in the Life) and spoke before his baptism, when, his mother having eaten some wild fruit, he said to her,—"You have an early appetite, mother!" "You have old talk, my child," she replied, and named him Sénan, (from sean, old). He told her to pull up three rushes, and the present lake, still called Loughshanan, broke out and he was baptized in it. He dedicated Kilmihil Church to St. Michael, because the archangel helped him in his combat with a monster. At present, save where the "book legend" has established itself, he is remembered only as a church founder (Kiltinnaun), healer ("Sinon's Well," Kilkee), woman-hater, and, above all, a dragon-queller. Along the Shannon banks you hear of his fight with the Cat, the Cathach of the older story, which dates from 800 (being known to Oengus[2]). At Doolough, near Mount Callan, the peasantry told of his chaining the peist, and throwing it into the Lough, which in storms the monster still makes to boil like a pot. Senán then built the churches on Scattery, besides those at Kiltinnaun, Kilrush, and Kilmihil, and the Round Tower of Scattery. A woman disturbed him just as he was completing the cap of the Tower, and he left it unfinished.[3] As a boy I heard in 1868 and 1872 endless tales of him from fishermen and donkey boys, but forgot them before I began to make notes. In 1878 I heard how the
- ↑ W. S. Mason, A Statistical Account or parochial survey etc., vol. ii., p. 439, a report of exceptional fulness and interest.
- ↑ The Calendar of Oengus (ed. by Whitley Stokes), Irish MS. series, Royal Irish Academy, vol. i., p. lvi., March 8th, says that Senán "gibbeted" the monster. The Lebar Brecc, pp. 83-4, says that Senán hanged and fettered the monster, whose name was Cathach, for eating his smith Narach, and "Senán was hangman to the beast" (p. lxii.).
- ↑ This is also alluded to in O'Brannan's poem on the Shannon. Cf. Folk-Lore, vol. xxii., p. 206.
