204 Collectanea.
Turning to local saints, we find many remembered in folk-tales, from the first known evangelist downwards. Earliest of all is Brecan, son of Eochaidh Bailldearg. " Now Eochaidh Bailldcarg had two sons, i.e. Conall Caerah and Breasal, i.e. his name was Brecan of Aran, as the poet says, — "Brecan of Aran, son of Eochaidh, was a righteous true-judging Saint, .... high his dignity before he got the name of Brecan."' " ^ He lived about 480, and is remembered as " Rikin " at Clooney near Quin, and as Brecan at Kilbreckan and at the well at Toomullin near the cliffs of Moher. Clare and Aran were so closely connected, until the O'Flaherties ousted the O'Briens from the Aran Isles about 15S5, that I include the story from Aran, where Brecan's church is the chief of the "Seven Churches." The Leaba Brecain, his "bed" or grave, an early enclosure with a richly carved but broken cross, yielded on excavation a slab with an early cross and "(S) ci Brecani,"" showing that he was early revered as a saint. The Clare stories, though vague, represent him consistently as a bright, joyful, affectionate man, hardly troubled by the more mundane tempta- tions. He won crowds of converts by tact, patience, and sweetness, and is said even to have tried to convert the devils who led forlorn hopes against his temper and patience. He won over the impatient, jealous St. Enda* by becoming one of his disciples and causing his own more numerous converts to pay reverence to that saint. He converted a chief ("king") whom Enda threatened with lightning, by thanking God for sparing the pagan, and then teaching the convert to do the same. These stories were told around Toomullin, but without the saints' names, in 1878, and my notes of 1880 give the last incident as follows : — "The King was going to curse and swear, when he stopped and asked the other saint if he had saved him .... and the King said to the saint, —
Book of Lee an ^ p. 214. One might speculate that the mythical island " Brasil " took its name from the saint, in the same way as St. Brandan's Isle, St. Ailbe's Isle, and the Isle of the Seven Bishops.
"Plate IV. See Lord Dunraven, Notes on Irish Architecture, vol. i., plates xllv.-v. ; G. Petrie, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland etc., p. 140, reads " capiti Brecani," but part of the "S" remains. A horseman on the broken cross at Killeany, shown in Plate IV., is supposed to be Brecan.
- I assume that St. Enda is intended by "the saint from Aran" in the
Toomullin stor)-.
