Government only in lip-service, affected neither the faith nor the services of the people until the wreckage caused by the Desmond wars about 1580 partly cleared its way. Even after the suppression of the monasteries[1] the traditions must have been kept alive by books until the hopeless ruin of the old conditions after 1651. By 1638 some of the Lives, and notably that of St. Mochulleus, had disappeared, so that I am inclined to believe that the stories of the Saints became oral traditions from at least about the middle of the seventeenth century. The Lives by which we can check the folk-tales are those of St. Senan (comprising a very early metrical one and others of the tenth to twelfth centuries), St. Mochulleus (written in 1142), St. Flannan (about the same date), St. MacCrecius (late), St. Endeus (about 1380), the latter's sister St. Fanchea, and St. Tola,—(the last does not mention Clare),—all later than 1000. Isolated mentions of other Clare saints abound from The Calendar of Oengus[2] (soon after 800) downwards, and a few notes in the Annals are possibly contemporary with the saints themselves.
The County has no early tales of St. Patrick, nor dedications to him, thus bearing out the statement of the Tripartite Life that he did not cross the Shannon. He baptized the Corcavaskin converts at Knockpatrick Hill near Foynes, in Limerick County, and blessed their country from its summit.[3] He also converted and baptized King Carthin and his son, Eochaidh Bailldearg, the over-chiefs, at the palace of the former at Sengal (or Singland) close to the modern city of Limerick. The widely-known old ballad—
"A hundred thousand vipers blue he charmed with sweet discourses,
And lunched on them at Killaloe with soups and second courses"
has no reference to any Clare story.
- ↑ The Franciscans of Quin and Ennis survived continuously, in the former place to 1825, and in the latter until the present day, but the Cistercians of Corcomroe Abbey only until about 1650.
- ↑ Editions published by Dr. {{Author:Whitley Stokes|Whitley Stokes]] in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy and those of the Henry Bradshaw Society.
- ↑ I discussed its identity in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxv. (C), p. 395. The Agallamh na Senorach ("The Colloquy with the Ancients," Silva Gadelica, vol. ii., pp. 101-265), however, tells of an excursion of St. Patrick in eastern Clare, but I do not think that this work has any weight against the authorities, loc. cit., p. 126; it is later than 1142 if by "Drogheda" Monastery it means the one founded in that year and not the venerable Monasterboice, which was sometimes called the "Abbey of Drogheda."
