Collect a nea. 209
of St. Maccrecius, has little other record. His name was forgotten at Tomfinlough until revived by one of my papers,^* but he played an anonymous part in a local tale in 1839, not quite forgotten fifty years later. Once on a time a horrible plague invaded Erin, large lumps coming out on the heads of the victims, who soon died. The saint told his flock one Sunday that any who got the disease should come at once to him. Soon afterwards, as he and his two deacons were making hay in the church field at Tomfin- lough, they saw a woman running up with two big lumps on her forehead. She fell at the saint's feet, and he prayed, signed the cross, and pulled off the lumps, which he flung against the church, where one of them burst. The woman at once recovered. One of the deacons knelt and glorified God and the saint, but the other mocked. " I will carve our three heads over the door ot the little church," said the holy man, "and let Heaven decide who is right." Next day the carved features of the scoffer were worn away.^^ The stone, (with two bosses, one round and one flat), built into the wall near the south-west angle of the graveyard, and the three carved heads, of which one is worn flat, may still be seen. The "plague stone" (Plate IV.) is believed to keep disorders out of the parish, which certainly was hardly affected by the destructive " Great Cholera " in the last century.
Seventh Century. — After 600 several saints of great note appeared in Clare. St. Colman mac Duach founded in 610 the famous monastery of Kilmacduach, not far over the borders of Clare, and died in 630. I have already told^^ how he miraculously brought away the Easter Day feast of his brother, King Guaire the Hospitable, from Gort to his hermitage under the cliffs of Kinallia. The story is still told, and the track in the rocks is called Boher- nameesh {bothar na mias, way of the dishes, or altar vessels). The grave of St. Colman's servant is seen near it.^' The little
- It now appears on a slab over the restored Holy Well at Fenloe.
- ^ Ordnance Survey Letters (Co. Clare), (MS. Royal Irish Academy), vol. ii.,
p. 205.
"Vol. XX.. p. 88.
- ' Ordnance Survey Letters (Co. Clare), vol. i., p. i lo ; G. Keating, History
of Ireland, Book ii., sec. vii., (ed. Dineen, Irish Texts Society, vol. iii. ), tell* the story, pp. 65, 71, but calls the saint Mochua.
