17 



stood on the site of the old mansion, over the rush-covered floors of 

 which Jeremy Taylor walked, and where he enjoyed such seclusion 

 from the troubles of his time as enabled him to enrich the literature 

 of his country with the works above referred to. The garden wall 

 was also traced, and a venerable old pear-tree was examined, whose 

 trunk, now grown massive as a forest oak, was once pliant as a 

 willow, and evidently trained along the wall it now surmounts, 

 perhaps by gentle hands. 



At a short distance from the site of the mansion stand the ivy- 

 covered gables of what Bishop Taylor's biographer refers to as the 

 "half-ruined church of Killulta," and where he preached in the 

 times of the Commonwealth, before his elevation to the See of 

 Down and Connor. 



After a rough ramble over ditches and drains, meadow lands 

 and swamps, the party reached the old church, and explored the 

 ruins happily still remaining to guide the pilgrim who searches for 

 traces of England's master in theology, the deeply-learned and pro- 

 found thinker of Oxford, and the eloquent orator who adorned the 

 court and camp of the unhappy monarch of the Stuart line — the 

 First Charles, whose chaplain he was. It was Charles' still more 

 unhappy son who nominated Jeremy Taylor to the see wherein he 

 died, and was buried beneath the chancel of the ancient cathedral 

 of Dromore. 



From the traditions in the neighbourhood, it would seem that 

 the old church was connected with a patron saint called Lugh, or 

 Lu. One old lady — Miss, or Nancy Culbert — states that in her 

 younger days, some sixty years ago, a station was annually held here 

 on the 4th August, and was called La-Lu. Mass was said at a 

 heap of stones between the church and the lake, and the people 

 went round the stones on their knees. A hollow is shown on a 

 stone in the graveyard, said to be the impression of St. Lu's knees. 

 This hollow is said to contain water all the year round, and has 

 the power of removing warts. Those who avail themselves of its 

 virtue throw pins into the hollow as " trippet " (tribute). Miss 

 Culbert says, others affirm, that instead of removing warts, the 

 water has the power of multiplying those disagreeable epidermal 



B 



