50 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



If the Domnach Croin Dubh celebration liad been instituted in honour 

 of St. Patrick, it would have been associated everywhere with his name; and 

 reserved exclusively for his veneiution, taking its place among oxu- annual 

 festivals as a second Patrick's Day. Such, indeed, was the special purpose 

 of the pattern, or station, held on the last Sunday of July at Kilnavart. A 

 generation or two ago large numbers of people regularly assembled there on 

 every recurring Domnach Crom Dubh ■} and I am infonued that, until recent 

 yeai-s, some pious folk kept up the traditional practice of mo\Tng on their 

 knees, after the Saint's example, and reciting prayers along the eonueeting 

 pathway between the well (lobar Patraic) and the rath (Possa Slecht). 



But holy wells abound in Ireland, dedicated to various other saints as 

 well as to the national apostle : and many of them even yet are the scenes 

 of Domnach Crom Dubh assemblies. Six miles west of Athlone, in the 

 Co. Eoscommon, is the \Tllage of Brideswell, so called fiom a St. Bridget's 

 Well, around which its humble habitations cluster. I was there in the last 

 week of July, 1920, and I learned that a local pattern held in honour of 

 St. Bridget still brings a considerable concouise to the place on Crom Dubh's 

 Sunday.^ Xear Lahinch, in the parish of Kilmauaheen, in West Clare, 

 stands another St. Bridget's Well, which is much regarded by the native 

 population. The patron saint is regularly venerated there on her festival day. 

 the 1st February ; but at the beginning of the last century the well derived 

 additional fame from the size of its gatherings on the last Sunday of July. 

 The devotions and the amusements special to the occasion were fortunately 

 placed on record by a careful obser^er,^ who incidentally mentioned that 

 the day " is called Garlic Sunday,- but for what reason is not known." 



A projecting stone in an old church wall at Cloghane, in Co. Kerry, 

 rudely shaped into a human head and countenance, was believed, in the 

 middle of the last century, to represent the features of Crom Dubh.^ At the 

 same ^^illage, ilr. Hitchcock tells ns, '"'a pattern is still held, in honour of 



' Father Brady writes me : ' ' There was a station at the well to which crowds of people 

 came about sixty years ago. The station has discontinued. It took place on the last 

 Sunday of July. Some old individuals in the locality still make the station on the las 

 Sunday of July."' 



- Lewis (" Top. Diet.," p. 224) states that this "patron," once of great celebrity, was 

 suppressed by the R. C. clergy. The "suppression'" can have proved only partially 

 effective. 



^ Rev. James Kenny, ll.d., Archdeacon of Kilfenora. in Shaw Mason's "Parochial 

 Survey of Ireland " (ISliJ, vol. i, p. 494. Mr. Xutt mistakenly refers this celebration 

 to Kilmainham in Meath ("Voyage of Bran," p. 214). 



' As to "Garlic " Sunday {recie Garland Sunday), ride infra, pp. 51, 56. 



' "Gleanings from Country Churchyards," by R. Hitchcock (in " Trans, of Kilkenny 

 Archaeological Society," vol. ii, p. 126). 



