t8 



appendages. The term La-Lu must mean Lu's-day, or the festival 

 of the saint of that name. The calendar of the saints of Ireland, 

 in " The Martyrology of Donegal," mentions a Molua, son of 

 Oche, Abbot of Ouain-Ferta-Molua, whose day is the 4th of 

 August. It is just probable that this Molua was the patron saint 

 of the Church. The prefix Mo was very commonly added to the 

 names of saints, and simply means " my " — compare our lady, &c. 

 Saint Molua worked many miracles in his life, and a place in 

 Upper Ossory, in the Queen's County, was called Cluain-Ferta- 

 Molua for that reason. His fame may have caused many churches 

 to be dedicated to him, and among them the old Church of Kilulta 

 at Lough Beg. St. Molua died a.d. 605. 



Kilulta was the name of a district, and implied " the woods of 

 Ulster ; " or could it be a corruption of Killuladth (Killulla) the 

 church of the tomb or earn ? A short distance from the church, 

 at a place called St. Stephen's Island, a large stone is shown ; and 

 the story goes that " once on a time that stone sat on three others 

 on the top of a hillock, and when the hill was laboured, the farmer 

 undertook to blast the stones out of that. As luck would have it, 

 he could not go to work that day, and next day he went early to 

 make a job of it, when, lo and behold, the big stone, and all it sat 

 on, was lifted clane and clever, without a ' slipe ' or anything else, and 

 was landed in the shough, where it sits to this day." Here we 

 have evidently an account of a cromlech, or tomb. Nancy Culbert 

 and other old folk in the locality describe a very large billy-tree, 

 that once stood at the entrance to the churchyard. Bile simply 

 means "aged tree," and is applied to places where, in Pagan times, 

 some sacred oak was an object of religious veneration. Such places 

 were frequently chosen for the sites of Christian churches. 



Portmore lake has evidently fallen back into its ancient bed, and 

 the drainage operations of past years left it margined with flat 

 marshy meadows. These, with the net work of wide stagnant 

 ditches by which they are intersected, are of the highest interest to 

 the lovers of our native botany. Plants still linger in such places 

 that are becoming year by year more rare. Many plants, stated 

 to have been in abundance, have disappeared, and others can with 



