When I read the folklore associated with Kilmore in the Schools Manuscripts I knew I would have to pay it a visit sometime.
How many opportunities do you get to visit a place where a man was brought back to life?
Folklore says it was St. Odhran who founded the monastery at Kilmore. It also says that it was the location of raising a man from the dead Lazarus style by St. Senan.
St. Senan is associated more with West Clare where he was born but he is noted as one of the "Twelve Apostles of Ireland" as was St. Odhran.
You would expect binging someone back from the dead would be a miracle that couldn't be topped. However St. Senan also rid Scattery Island in the Shannon Estuary of "The Cathach", a sea serpent like creature so it is debatable which is more impressive!
When he was a boy he also performed a miracle similar to Moses's parting of the red sea where a path opened across an estuary to allow him to bring back his cows.
Here is the folklore from the Schools Manuscripts
http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922147/4856392/5017172
"There was a miracle performed in Kilmore, it happened that a certain widows only son died and when he was being brought to the graveyard, the widow saw the two priests she ran to them and went on her knees and begged them to bring her son to life. St Senan took the body into a room in the monastery and prayed over it and behold the man came to life."
"Saint Odraín of Latteragh is the patron Saint of this parish.
He built a famous monastery in Latteragh about the year 500 A.D. on a level space on side of a hill.
Some time later he built another in Kilmore which means the big church, it was made of timber but later on it was made of stone, it is now in ruins.
There was a great miracle performed there by St. Sennon, he brought the son of a woman of that district to life."
He built a famous monastery in Latteragh about the year 500 A.D. on a level space on side of a hill.
Some time later he built another in Kilmore which means the big church, it was made of timber but later on it was made of stone, it is now in ruins.
There was a great miracle performed there by St. Sennon, he brought the son of a woman of that district to life."
For an area where a monastery was supposed to have been located there are very few crop-marks around it. It is the focus of four roads in the area so perhaps that is of some significance. The present ruined church is meant to have been built in the 18th Century. An information board at the graveyard says that the original church here was wooden and was replaced by a stone structure in 1000AD. It says the present structure operated as a Protestant church until 1820.
Were the numerout burials all Protestants?
ReplyDeleteThe Topographical Dictionaly of Ireland by S.Lewis *1840), notes that an abby having no visible evidence was said to have been established in 540 AD. The miracle of St. Senan is recorded in Irish in the Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore (AD 1100-1200). In the Triumphs of Turlough (AD 1304), the great church of Ara and its seminary were burned by Turlough. The earliest churches were of wooden timbers & later of stone. Logainm states Kilmore had a church built in the 10th century. That cites many records of Kilmore, including a papal tax two years after Turlough' burned it and numerous records from 16th century into 1840. The ruin in the photo was in use as a Protestant church in the 18th century, but is undated & unrecorded in any sources of which I am aware, but it appears to be much older. Records are extant of a church in Kilmore about the time of the rebellion of 1641. The church in the photo may date to that period or even earlier.
ReplyDelete