Westropp — Tyfes of the Ring-Forts and similar Structures. 387 



bushes. Mochulla found a smooth rock with a cavity (bullaun, or basin- 

 stone, not infrequent in the district), which the doe fills with milk, and here 

 he and his brother hermit found a cell. " King Guaraeus " (evidently Guaire 

 " the hospitable," of Aidhue, near Gort, c. 620, who died at an advanced age 

 in 662), sends seven soldiers to capture Mochulla. They join the community 

 and toil for a year " in erecting an impregnable stone fort as a refuge against 

 further attack." It had ramparts, very deep fosses, and outworks (" muros, 

 fosseta profundissima necnon et antemuralia ") . The enraged Guaire comes 

 by night across the mountain passes, and, remaining on a spur, sends his 

 troops across the plain to the monastery. A female anchorite, " Glasnetis " 

 (unknown to local tradition), who had gone to "fetch away fire" from the 

 place, meeting the soldiers, drops the burning embers and (as is the case at, 

 perhaps, the very " spurs " while we write) the heather and furze catch fire and 

 make a dense smoke ; the soldiers fall insensible in the reek, Guaire becomes 

 humble, and " afterwards becomes renowned for his liberality." Mochulla is 

 consecrated a bishop, and the Life ends abruptly. The legend alludes to an 

 ill-disposed chief, Forannan, who appears as King of Thomond in the Book of 

 Ballymote, probably in the early seventh century, as he married a daughter of 

 Guaire. It also tells how King Torlough O'Brien, and his son and tanist 

 Teige, blockaded the monastery in which one of the chiefs (who had killed a 

 favourite courtier) had taken refuge, and nearly starved it into surrender 

 The monks, to whom St. Mochulla appeared in a vision, found a well on the 

 left of the altar, which abated their thirst. The punishment of Teige, and 

 his father's offer to the Abbot of all the lands he could see " from the top of 

 the hill where the saint was known to be buried," ensue ; but Teige dies the 

 same day and his father the same month, in 1086, as recorded in the Annals, 

 The church is called " Tulach " in the Papal Taxation of 1302. From some 

 translations of the " Cathreim Thoirdhealbhaigh " it appears that it was at 

 " dewy Tulach " that Death, in " a raid that takes a king, came to visit 

 Brian's Eath." King Dermot O'Brien, in 1313, after a brave struggle against 

 his deadly illness, took to his bed there, and " death divorced him and his 

 disease." The Mac ISTamara chief, MelachHn, having come to \dsit him, was 

 seized and chained; and after the king's death he and their other chief, 

 Lochlain, were cruelly put to death. " Green Moyare's two horsemen " being 

 killed, this misfortune crushed Tulach, as corn is crushed in the quern. 

 Five years later King Murchacl O'Brien, after his useless conference with the 

 Norman nobles in Limerick, came to " Tulach na n-espoc " (of the bishop's), 

 *' sanctified by bell and precious mass, by relics, gold-enshrinedi by rare piety 

 and notable miracles " — another indirect allusion to the now almost forgotten 

 founder. At the close of the century in 1397 the MadSTamaras confirmed a 



R.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXVII., SECT. C, [57] 



