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place there seems no reason why, in 1403, an event of such 
ancient date should be represented in a religious picture at 
the tomb of Malachy O’Kelly and his wife, individuals who 
had no other connexion with the event than that the O’Conor, 
who presided over the execution, was one of her remote ances- 
tors. But secondly, the Four Masters tell us that there were 
three victims put to death on this occasion, namely, Diarmaid, 
the son of Mac Murrough, heir apparent to the throne of 
Leinster, his grandson, the son of Donnell Cavanagh, and 
the son of his foster-brother, O’Caellighe. The picture, how- 
ever, represents only a single victim, and therefore accords 
more nearly with the martyrdom of St. Sebastian than with 
the death of Mac Murrough’s hostages ; the figure, moreover, 
being a naked one, according to the usual representation of 
St. Sebastian, without any symbol of rank, or other token, 
which would most probably have been added if the son of 
Mac Murrough had been intended. Moreover, the fresco, as 
the inscription shows, was evidently a monumental picture, 
painted on the walls ofa church, in the very chancel, and 
consequently with a religious and devotional object; it is 
much more likely, therefore, that it should depict the martyr- 
dom of a saint than a barbarous execution, more than two 
centuries old, with which neither the individuals whose tomb it 
decorated, nor the clergy ofthe abbey, had any special reference. 
Nor is it the fact that St. Sebastian’s story was unknown to 
the ancient Church of Ireland; for although the name of that 
saint does not occur in the martyrology of the Four Mas- 
ters, which is exclusively confined to Irish saints, yet it does 
occur under the form Sapaist, in the older martyrology of 
Aengus, at the 20th day of January, the very same day on 
which his memory is celebrated at Rome. We find his name 
also in the martyrology of Bede, and in all the Calendars of 
the English and Anglo-Irish Churches, long before the times 
of Maelseachlain O’Kelly and his wife Finola. See, for ex- 
