102 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
The Holy Well and Station of St. Mura. 
A singular instance of the simple faith of the Irish peasantry 
should be here recorded. The native Irish of the most Celtic parts of 
Inis-owen were ignorant of the very name of St. Mura; yet a tradi- 
tional halo of sanctity surrounds his former dwelling-place, indicating 
that in times of old the place was a seat of holiness and scholarship. 
Hence pilgrimages to the Holy Well are common: around the “‘station”’ 
the pilgrims have for centuries made their ‘‘turas,’’ they “tell” their 
beads, and fulfil such acts of prayer and penance as are usually paid 
by pilgrims at the shrines of the saints of their veneration. Many a 
pilgrim from Clonmany and Malin, foot-weary and travel-stained, has 
the writer seen sanctify this retreat with a devotion known only to 
the simple in faith—exhibiting, after a lapse of twelve hundred years, 
a religious belief as unique, and a fervour of devotion as enthusiastic 
as any that centred about the spot in the beginning of the seventh 
century. The ‘‘ well” and ‘‘station”’ are contiguous to each other; 
the former is close to the Lough Swilly railway, near St. John’s, the 
residence of Mr. Olphert, D.L.; the latter is in a field belonging to 
the same gentleman, and adjoins his garden; both are easily dis- 
tinguished. Many miracles are spoken of traditionally as the result 
of the pilgrimages, but the recorded miracles mentioned by Colgan 
are lost. It should be mentioned that the Holy Well of Fahan owes 
its preservation, at the present day, to the large-hearted reverence of 
a native of Inis-owen for the reliques, eloquent in their very silence, 
of the ancient history of his country. The gentleman, who by the 
way, does not share the religious belief of the pilgrims who crowd the 
spot, prevailed upon the engineers of the Lough Swilly railway to 
respect the Holy Well, in fixing the curvature of the line. Conse- 
quently, to the former owner of St. John’s, Major Marshall, J. P., 
aided by the active intervention of the then worthy and venerated 
parish priest of Fahan, the late Rev. Bernard M‘El-Downey, we owe 
the saving of the Well from destruction. Major Marshall caused an 
ornate brick covering to be built over the Well; but the vandalism which 
had formerly, as Colgan says, effaced the remains of antiquity from 
the place, was still sufficiently rampant to tear down even the arched 
covering, and the fallen debris remains a monument to ‘‘the rabidness 
of their fury.” 
Dr. Reeves fixes the death of the founder of the abbey as having 
occurred about the year a.p. 645. The learned Colgan refers it to 
the commencement of the seventh century, on the ground that St. 
Mura wrote an account of St. Columba or Columbkill, who died a.p. 
o9le 
Many of the successors of St. Mura in this monastery were persons 
of distinction who have left a name in Irish history; among them may 
be named Fothadh-na-Canoine or ‘‘ the Canonist.”’ 
-y The parish of Fahan is noteworthy as having provided many bishops, 
