108 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



II. History. By H. J. Lawlor. 



A tradition was current in the upper part of the county Fermanagh a 

 century ago that the shrine then known among the peasantry of that district 

 as "the Domnach" was presented by the Pope to one Donagh O'Hanlon, 

 who had made a pilgrimage to Pome about 600 years earlier. This story of 

 course cannot be true ; and it is vain to speculate as to the element of fact 

 which may lie behind it. Its value is not enhanced by the assertion of the 



son who told it to Dr. O'Beirne of Portora in 1832, that it rested on the 

 authority of Sir James Ware. 1 It is nevertheless not without interest, as we 

 shall see. But Dr. O'Beirne's informant went on to relate the wanderings of 

 the Domnach in the seventeenth century, with no appeal to authority: and 

 here, I conceive, we may accept his statements as at least not far from the 

 truth. I>r. O'Beirne, it is true, describes them as "vague detail"; but I am 

 rather inclined t.> note the absence of vagueness and the minuteness of detail 

 as .i guarantee of the general accuracy of the tradition. This is what he said : 

 O'Hanlon deposited the shrine in the monastery ol Aghalurcher ;' but when 

 this monastery was desl \"\>->\ in < !romwell's time, it was hidden at Lough E] e, 

 between Tempo and Lisbellaw, and after the restoration of pe, nr ii was placed in 

 a neighbouring chapel. In 1689 it was again concealed at Largv. "an old castle 

 tSirH. Brooke's deer-park,"* from which it was dug up aftei the Boynebya 

 priest named Anthony Maguire. All the place- mentioned are in Manure's 

 country in the count] Fermanagh, and not far apart. After Anthony 



quire's death it was carried by Ids niece to Florence Court; hut the 



that it should ho brought hack, and this was done. Here 



the Btory end-, and we heai' no mote of the shrine till the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century, when it was in the p sion of an oil woman at 



okeborough, close to Largy, and in the Parish of Aghavea, which adjoins 

 ilurcher. she was a Maguire and lived in Maguire's country; and she 



. ired that the shrine, which wa« supposed (.. contain some of the Blessed 

 Virgin's hair, bad belonged to " the lord of Enniskillen " — the chieftain of the 

 M iguires who was executed for complicity in the rebellion of loll.' From 



' I do n.. t know any passage in Ware's published writings which refers to the 

 Domnach. 



■ The Rev. .T. K. McKenna believes that there traa no religious establishment in 

 Aghalurcher, other thin a parish church, in later centuries. Hut in Fermanagh traditions 

 ■ •hi parochial churches are often called monasteries. The church ol Aghalurcher was in 

 ruins in 1622. The introduction of Cromwell at this point of the story is therefore 

 unhistorical. 



3 A very small townland, named Largy, adjoins Deerpark in the parish of Aghavea. 



1 .1. Groves in W. Shaw Mason's / 1819, vol iii, p. UYA ; W. CarleU.n, 



T ■ ■ - Trith Peasantry, ser. 2, Dublin, 1833, vol. iii, pp. ill 143. 



