assisted by Mog Ruith, a celebrated Irish druid from the island of Valencia, who, having learned all the druidism or magic that could be learned in these islands, went with his daughter to take lessons from Simon Magus, in whose contest with St. Peter he is represented taking a part. The Wheel was to enable Simon to sail in the air; but it met with an accident, and Mog Ruith's daughter brought certain fragments of it to Ireland, one of which she fixed as the rock or pillar-stone of Cnámchoill, a place near Tipperary, the name of which has been Anglicized into Cleghile. The stone was believed to produce blindness if looked at, and death if touched.[1] But there were other versions which made the coming of the Wheel a great calamity, not only to Ireland, but to a great portion of the west of Europe: it became a recognized element in so-called prophecies of calamities to overcome Erinn. Thus in one called the Ecstasy of St. Moling, the Wheel is represented as destined to come followed by a dreadful scourge which was to destroy three-fourths of the people as far as the Tyrrhene Sea (p. 173), in the reign of a king Flann Ginach of Durlas.[2] Another extravagant prophecy, vainly attributed to St. Columba, made the Wheel into an enormous ship containing a fabulous number of warriors, and sailing over sea and land with equal ease; but it was fated to be
- ↑ O'Curry, MS. Mat. pp. 402-3; Irish Nennius, pp. 264-5 (also editor's note with references to Duald Mac Firbia'a MS. in the Lib. of the Royal Irish Academy, and to the Bk. of Lecan, fol. 133); Stokes-O'Donovan ed. of Cormac, p. 74.
- ↑ O'Curry, MS Mat. pp. 402-3.
vij. 65; Senchus Mór, iij. 204, 210); and the reference implied in the adjective must have been to the paddles or float-boards of an undershot water-wheel.
