46 Gossipings about the Parish of Saul. 



century in Ulster. St. Thassach was the chosen disciple of St. 

 Patrick, the first bishop of Saul, who gave " the body of Christ " 

 to St. Patrick, before his death, in the monastery of Saul. The 

 little church of Tassach is about 32 feet long, 20 wide, and 

 stood about 12 feet high. The wall to the south has fallen, and 

 the window in the east end is crumbling to pieces, through 

 want of a stitch in time. The windows are splayed with flat 

 stone lintels, and the material used for bedding the stones is a 

 kind of rough yellow sandy clay. I am inclined to think that 

 some valuable discoveries might be made here, for on tapping 

 the large flat stones, which form a complete fence or enclosure 

 round the foundations, they emitted hollow sounds, as if from 

 a chamber below. It may be of interest to state that the large 

 altar stone, measuring about 12 feet long, 4 feet wide, and in 

 some places almost 8 inches thick, at present in use in the 

 Roman Catholic chapel at Saul, was originally used for the 

 same holy purpose in the ancient church of the parish. 

 Scattered throughout the district may be seen many valuable 

 relics of the past, far too numerous for me to refer to in this 

 short paper. There is a very fine pillar-stone standing in a 

 field at Raholp, with a trace of Ogham characters, and on the 

 face of a large rock, a few paces from the road, on the crest of 

 the hill leading down to the village, may be seen a considerable 

 number of Ogham characters, which, I need scarcely tell you, 

 I never attempted to decipher. We have no reliable informa- 

 tion afforded us of what took place in the Abbey of Saul 

 between the fifth and eleventh century, and in order to hurry 

 along I have purposely avoided entering into the ecclesiastical 

 history of Down and Saul. About 1 174, a son of the Abbot of 

 Moville, in the *' County of Ards," was Abbot of Saul, and a 

 subscribing witness to the charter granted to the abbey of 

 Downpatrick by Sir John De Courcey. In passing I may here 

 mention that Downpatrick is the chief town of Downshire, the 

 only county in Ireland designated a shire, and represents the 

 greater portion of the ancient kingdom of Ulidia. Like many 

 other ancient royal cities it has been subjected to changes, 



