| |
| Relagh
Beg/Moybologue |
| |
This road travels through some very
desolate countryside. This is still frontier country,
for it is not far from the border with County Meath. This
means little nowadays, but until the early Seventeenth
century Cavan belonged to the land of 'the wild Irish'
or 'the Irish rebels', whereas Meath was an integral part
of Anglo Norman, and later English settlement in Ireland,
its inhabitants governed by English law and loyal in their
own way to its far-off rulers . Three and a half miles
south of Bailieborough we come to a crossroads. We take
a left turn, and a little over half a mile afterwards
we come to Moybolgue church and the nearby motte and bailey
at Relagh Beg. (These are all on the left of the road.)
The ruined church and cemetery stand on a slight rise,
quite close to the left-hand side of the road, while the
motte and bailey stand about a hundred metres north-west,
and are not easily accessible, though they are visible
from the road.
This area has been inhabited since Neolithic times - at
least 2,200 BC. It has an important place in Irish mythology
as the place of a decisive battle between two mythological
Irish tribes. Many histories of Ireland written in the
Middle Ages confuse history, mythology and pure fantasy.
According to most of them Ireland was inhabited by two
distinct races: the Formorians and the Fir Bolg. The decisive
victory of the latter over the former is supposed to have
occurred here, at Moybolgue - in Irish Magh Bolg.
A most entertaining legend is told about St Patrick's
alleged foundation of the church in the fifth century.
He was travelling through these parts to Ardee when he
happened to spy a funeral cortege approaching. In the
opposite direction came a beautiful young girl riding
a horse led by a groom. The bushes were laden with fruit,
and the girl put out her hand to pick some. The moment
she put a berry in her mouth she became a different person
- literally! This comely maiden was none other than the
Cailleach, a nasty deity capable of changing its / her
appearance at the drop of a hat, or as here, with the
taste of a berry. She was transformed into a violent ugly,
cannibalistic hag that ate the horse, groom and some of
the mourners. As she approached St Patrick she gave every
indication that he was on the menu as well, but being
an ever-resourceful saint he took his holy water brush
and threw it, as on all these occasions, with breath-taking
precision, hitting the hag straight between the eyes.
She / it thereupon exploded into four pieces, one of which
stayed in the air, while another fell into Lenanabragh
Lough, nearly two miles to the south west. |
|
| |
There are numerous large stones in the
area to the east of the church, some being naturally occurring
glacial erratics, which were traditionally pointed out
to show where the final half of the hag fell to earth.
Some say that St Patrick stood on the mound at Relagh
Beg as he threw the water brush, and point to a depression
on the top to mark the spot; others relate that he threw
the missile from the hill at Kilmainhamwood, over six
miles away. But the whole story is folklore, as history
pours a nice healthy dollop of cold water on the whole
event. St Patrick never came near this area, and even
if he had, he wouldn't have stood on the mound at Relagh
Beg, which wasn't constructed until well over seven centuries
after St Patrick's era. One piece of the tale ought not
to be forgotten; the Cailleach is supposed to have promised
to return after 99 generations of the local famiy of Gargan
had lived in the area and finish where she left off…
History may disprove a lot of the legends associated with
this location, but its history is itself quite fascinating.
A church was founded here in the early medieval period,
probably by a St Siric. A number of early martyrologies
mention a St Siric of Moybolgue in Bregha, feast day November
26th. A tradition current in the eighteenth century mentioned
a St Etchenius or Eitchen of Clonfad, who was mentioned
as one of St Columcille's teachers before he left for
exile on Iona. The first church was probably built of
wood, and while it was no doubt on this site, nothing
of it survives. The oldest part of the surviving church
dates from the late medieval period (c.1200 to 1600).
The local family of Gargan became closely associated with
it , supplying numerous priests and looking after the
fabric and maintenance. By this time the association of
the church with St Patrick had begun, for a reference
from the register of the Archbishop of Armagh from 1409
contains an order to the Bishop of Tir Brun (now Kilmore)
to assemble his diocesan clergy in the church of St Patrick
at Moybolgue for a visitation of the diocese by the archbishop.
A portion of the lands nearby were set aside for the church's
upkeep; these were Termon lands, and anyone who entered
them immediately enjoyed the church's protection and gained
sanctuary. The Gargan family looked after these lands
as if they were their own - and, in the rather complex
framework of late medieval Irish religion, they were.
The presence of Termon lands implied that the church also
supplied hospitality and a certain level of basic medical
care to those who were ill.
In the late twelfth century various groups originating
in Wales and southern England, but usually described (misleadingly)
as Anglo-Normans, invaded Ireland. They succeeded, within
a few decades, in conquering the eastern and southern
flanks of Ireland, but they never lost sight of a conquest
of the whole island of Ireland. King Henry II made grants
of lands that had not been conquered, on a speculative,
'go-and-get-it' basis. Such a grant was made in 1186 of
much of modern Counties Cavan and Leitrim, and in the
following years attempts were made to take the territory.
It bordered on the north of Meath, already under Anglo-Norman
control. There is no evidence of what type of reception
the invaders received. They had an advantage in terms
of equipment; the Norman knight was well-armed, protected
by a near total covering of armour, and his means of transport
was a large, heavy war-horse. In fact, knight and horse
formed a veritable fighting machine; its size and novelty
could brow-beat an enemy into submission. Once they had
arrived, they built forts of the 'motte and bailey' type
that we have met elsewhere, consisting of a steep, earthen
mound surmounted by a wooden tower, with a lower flatter
appendage of earth, the whole surrounded by a deep ditch.
The example at Relagh Beg is very fine, even though part
of the motte has been quarried away and the ditch filled
in.
|
|
This was the initial form of fortification
used by the Anglo-Normans throughout Ireland. It could
be built in a hurry and it wasn't intended to last. Once
the territory had been subjugated they moved on to another
area. If they had stayed, and the site was strategic,
it was replaced by stone structures, but the Anglo-Normans
didn't stay in Breifne long enough to get to this stage,
for they had been driven out by the 1220's. The land was
too poor and wet for them anyway.
On the Ulster Plantation map of c. 1609 a roofless church
is shown at Moybolgue. By 1620 it had been taken over
by the Established church and was in use for divine Service.
In the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of the 1641
Rebellion the church was taken back into Catholic hands,
but the secretary of Phelim O'Neill, Fr O'Mellain, mentions
that it was burned in 1646. It was attacked again in 1651
during the campaign of Colonel Barrow. A piece of folklore
associated with this event tells that the bell in the
church's tower began to peal without any human assistance
so as to warn parishioners of the approaching troops.
It then leap out of the tower and flew through the air,
ringing as it went, until it dropped into a nearby lake.
|
| |
In the years after the Rebellion the
church passed back into Protestant use. There then developed,
for much of the eighteenth century, a very humane accommodation
of traditions. The protestant, specifically Anglican congregation
was very small, and so only part of the church's nave
was restored and roofed. In a corner of the unroofed portion
of the church the Catholic parish priest Fr. John Garrigan
or Gargan (c.1649- after 1730) was allowed to hold a Latin
school. The rector here for much of the early eighteenth
century was William Brooke, father of Henry, the dramatist
and journalist, and grandfather of the yet more illustrious
charlotte, both of whom we will meet again shortly. The
need for Fr Gargan's teaching cut across religious barriers,
and his pupil's were said to have numbered the young Thomas
Sheridan, future head master of Cavan's Royal School,
confidante of Dean Swift and grandfather of dramatist
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. This was not a mere rumour,
for the author of the volume Brookiana, published in 1780,
prints a dialogue he had with Dr Sheridan's brother, a
man of 90, still perhaps being fanciful when he recalled
those days of his youth when even 'the very shepherds
spoke Latin'. The elderly Sheridan sighed that the study
of Irish had been neglected, though the daughter of Henry
Brooke (the subject of Brookiana) was to make a far-reaching
contribution to its eventual revival.
Irish was still the language of this area until well into
the nineteenth century. One of the first teachers of Irish
at St Patrick's College Maynooth was a native of the parish,
as was Dr Farrell O'Reilly, Roman Catholic Bishop of Kilmore
(1800-26), who is buried in the graveyard at Moybolgue.
Of the original church site all that remains is a ruined
two-storey building with a number of windows, some blocked
up. This stood to the south of the nave of the church,
and it is thought to be a sacristy, or a priest's dwelling-place.
On the north side of the nave are the remains of some
crosses, which may have been gravestones or simple wayside
crosses erected along roads. Two of them have dates, but
they are very hard to read. One is dated '1684' and the
other '1686'. |
|
| |
|
|
Folklore
