of their children and of their flocks,[1] in order to secure power and peace in all their tribes, and to obtain milk and corn for the support of their families. The place, Mag Slecht, was, we are told, so called from the kneeling and other more violent acts of adoration through which the people went before the god: it is ascertained[2] to have been near the village of Ballymagauran, in the barony of Tullyhaw, in the county of Cavan; and St. Patrick is said to have built there a church called Domhnach Mór,[3] the name of which is worth a passing remark. The adjective mór, 'great,' was added to distinguish it from other churches called Domhnach: this word is no other than the Latin[4] dominicum, 'a church or edifice sacred to the Lord,' borrowed, and it can hardly be regarded as an accident that the edifice to supersede the sanctuary of the chief of the Goidelic pantheon should have been called after the Lord and Head of the Christian religion. It would, however, be hazardous to conclude as much regarding all the localities in Ireland now marked by churches bearing this name of Domhnach.[5]
Be that as it may, there is on record a place-name which bears evidence to the worship of the heathen god in the centre of ancient Britain. For if we turn the
- ↑ O'Conor's Bibliotheca Manuscripta Stowensis (Buckingham, 1818), i. 40-1, and his Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores (Buckingham, 1814), Vol. I. (proleg. i.) pp. xxii, xxiii; also the Four Masters, A.M. 3656, note by O'Donovan; and M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, loc. cit.
- ↑ Four Masters, ibid.
- ↑ Four Masters, ibid.
- ↑ Domhnach has also become the regular word for Sunday, that is Dies Dominicus, 'the Lord's Day,' French Dimanche.
- ↑ No less than twenty such figure in the index to The Martyrology of Donegal (Dublin, 1864).
