72
AN GAOḊAL.
Taking then, all these circumstances into ac¬
count, I cannot avoid coming to the conclusion
that this ancient and curious chronicle must have
belonged to some church situated in Mac Dermot's
country, and that probably it belonged to the Is¬
land of Saints in Loch Ce, though we have no re¬
cord of the time at which the church of that island
became ruined and abandoned.
I must confess that this idea would never prob¬
ably have occured to me, if it was not suggested by
what I found in the book itself; for at the lower
margin of folio 14, I found this record, in a good
hand, of the period to which it refers — 1594.
"Tomaltach, son of Owen, son of Hugh, son of
Dermod. son of Rory Caech (the blind), died in
the last month of this year, in his own house in
Cluain Fraoich". [See original in APPENDIX NO
LVI.
This is a remarkable entry to be found in this
book. Cluain Fraoich, near Strokestown, in the
County of Roscommon, was the name of the an¬
cient place of the O'Conor family, Kings of Con¬
nacht down to the sixteenth century; but the name
of the man and the pedigree which are given in
this obituary are not found among the O'Conor
pedigrees, as far as I am able to discover, though
I have examined all the accessible old genealog¬
ical tables of authority of that family; and as there
is no such line of pedigree as the present to be
found among them, it naturally follows that this
Tomaltach, son of Owen, must have been a mem¬
ber of some other important family situated in the
same country, and in a residence of the same name.
And such was the fact; for we find in Cucogry
O'Clery’s Book of Pedigrees (R. I. Academy) the
following curious line of a branch of the great Mac
Dermot family, which might have struck off from
the parent chieftain tree in the person of Der¬
mod, the son of Rory Caech (or the blind) Mac
Dermot, which Rory the blind must have flourish¬
ed about the middle of the fifteenth century, as
we find in the annals that his son Rory og, or jun¬
ior, Lord of Moylurg, died in the year 1486.
O'Cleary says: "The Sliocht Diamada are de¬
scended from Dermot, the son of Rory Caech (the
blind), son of Hugh, etc., viz. — Tomaltach, the
son of Owen, son of Hugh, son of Dermot, son of
Rory the blind, son of Hugh, son of O'Conor",
etc., Now we find that the Tomaltach [or Thomas
the first, or rather the last, link in this line of ped¬
igree preserved by O'Clery, is precisely the same
Tomaltach whose death is so circumstantially re¬
corded in a post insertion, in what have been call¬
ed the Annals of Boyle, at least since Ussher's
time, that is for nearly 250 years.
This record shows pretty clearly that at the time
of making it the book was in the possession of the
Mac Dermot family; and that it was so, there are
still stronger proofs in the book itself to show; for
in several parts of it — towards the end, but parti¬
cularly at folios 10, 20, 30, 31, 33, — we find emen¬
dations and additions in the handwriting in hand-
writing of Brian Mac Dermot, who made the ad¬
ditions to the Annals of Loch Ce. which have al¬
ready been noticed in speaking of that important
chronicle. These insertions are sufficient to show
that the original book, now in the British Museum
and known as the Annals of Boyle, was at the
close of the sixteenth century in the possession of
the chief, Brian Mac Dermot, lord of the territory
in which Boyle is situated; and this would and
should be received as evidence enough for their
being the Annals of Boyle, if really any such anals
had ever existed. There is, however, in the lower
margin of folio 30, page a, or 33, page b, — I am not
certain at present which, — a memorandum, in a
few words, which is incontestably fatal to the
name of Annals of Boyle. The words, which are
written in a bad but old hand, run thus : "The
historical book of the Island of the Saints." — See
orginal in APPENDIX, No. LVII.] And to connect
them still further with some Island of the Saints,
we find the following words in a good hand of the
latter part of the sixteenth century, in the lower
margin of folio 13, b, of the book: "Four score
years from the death of Saint Patrick to the death
of Dermot Mac Cerbhaill monarch of Erinn], ac¬
cording to the Martyrology of the Island of the
Saints." — [See original in APPENDIX, No. LVIII.]
It must be confessed that, although that these
words prove clearly enough that this book of an¬
nals did not belong to the Abbey of Boyle, still
they do not show with equal clearness to what
place they really did belong, any more than that
they must, according to these evidences, have be¬
longed to some place in or about Loch Ce, in Mac
Dermot's country.
That they belonged to some island is plain en¬
ough, and that they are not the Annals of the Is¬
land of the Saints in Loch Ree in the Shannon, is
evident, as the Four Masters say of that book of
annals, that it came down but to the year 1237,
whereas these came down to the year 1257; and if
we may rely on the word of the venerable Charles
O'Conor of Belanagar, they cannot be the Annals
of Connacht; for in a list of Irish manuscripts in
his possession about the year 1774, and which list
is in his own handwriting, I find, — "The Annals of
Connacht, compiled in the Cistercian Abbey of
Boyle, beginning at the year 1224, ending 1546”.
[M,S. in the Royal Irish Academy, No 23. 6; p
126.]
By the aid of my learned and esteemed friend,
Denis H. Kelly, Esq., of Castle Kelly, in the
the county of Roscommon, I find that there really
is an Oilean na Naemh, or Saints Island, in Loch
Ce, close to Mac Dermot's rock or castle, and about
two miles from Boyle: and that the local tradition
is, that the ruined church which still remains on
it was founded by Saint Colum Cille, about the
same time, probably, that he founded the church
of Eas Mac nEirc, at the mouth of the river Boyle,
in the same neighbourhood, and the church on
Oilean na Naemh, or Saints Island in Loch Gam¬
hna, in the County of Longford. Tradition also
has it that the church was occupied by "Culdees",
or Ceilide De, down to the twelfth century.
That Saint Colum Cille founded a church on an
island in Loch Ce, some time about the year 550
will also clearly be seen from the following extract
from O'Donnell's remarkable collection of ancient
tracts, relating to the life and acts of that eminent
saint.
On one occasion that Colum Cille was staying
on an island in Loch Ce in Connacht, and a poet
and man of science came to visit him, and conver¬
sed with him for a while, then went away from
him. And the monks wondered that Colum Cille
did not ask for a specimen of his composition from
the poet, as he was wont to ask from every man of
science who visited him. And they asked him why
he had acted so. Colum Cille answered them, and
said, that it would not be proper for him to ask
for pleasant things from a man to whom sorrow
was near at hand; and that it should not be long
before they should see a man coming unto him
(To be continued)
