Falki>^er — The Hospital of St, John of Jerusakm. 279 



it is noticeable that of the nine Kilmainhams which occur in the 

 Townland Index, all but two are within that territory.^ 



Kone of the traditions which have been preserved respecting 

 St. Maignenn have any special relation to the seat of his Abbey, and, 

 except for the mention by the Four Masters under the year 782 of 

 " Learghus Ua Fidchain, a wise man of Cill Maignenn," and (in the 

 Eook of Lecan), of Eochaid, Magister of Kilmainham (which seems to 

 indicate that a school existed there), history is practically silent 

 about Kilmainham from its foundation almost to the eve of the 

 Eattle of Clontarf.- It has, however, as Professor Kuno Meyer has 

 lately made us aware, a place in the proverbial philosophy of the 

 Irish Triads, where it is bracketed with Derry and Taghmon as 

 among ''the three places of Ireland to alight at"; whence we 

 may infer that the Abbey of Kilmainham possessed from the earliest 

 times a reputation for generous hospitality. In the struggle to 

 dislodge the Danes with which the eleventh century opened, the 

 importance of its position, in close proximity to the Scandinavian 

 stronghold in Dublin, made Kilmainham the scene of more than one 

 encounter between the Gaedhill and the Gaill. In 1012, according 

 to the Annalists, " Murchadh, son of Brian, plundered the country as 

 far as Glen-da-locha and Cell Maigneann, burning the whole country, 

 and carrying off innumerable prisoners."^ A little later the chieftain 

 was to find his own grave near the field of his foray. For it was to 

 the ancient cross of Kilmainham that, according to tradition, the 

 bodies both of Murchadh and his son Turlough were brought for 

 burial after the Eattle of Clontarf ; a tradition which, perhaps, derives 

 some authority from the discovery, at the end of the eighteenth 

 century, of tlie sword still shown at the Koyal Hospital as O'Erien's. 



From the triumph of Erian Eorumha to the coming of the English, 



^ The variations of this place-name, alike in its Anglicised form of Kilmainham, 

 and in its Gaelic original of Cell-Maignenn, are very numerous. I am indebted 

 to the courtesy of Father Edmund Hogan, S.J., for permission to enumerate the 

 examples he has collected in his notes to the " Onomasticon Goidelicum," 

 under the article on "Cell-Maignenn," viz. :— Cill-Magnenn, Cill-Magnend, 

 Cill-Meinan, Cill-Menin, Kil-Maignan, Kilmaynan, Kilmenan, Kilmenania, and 

 Kylmaynan. Other forms will be found in the Irish State Paper Calendars, 

 where, however, the spelling varies with the whim of the writers. 



• Mo-Galboc of Kilmainham is mentioned in the Book of Leinster, pp. 364, 368 ; 

 in the Book of Ballymote, 1256 ; and in the Book of Lecan, p. 109. And there 

 is mention in the Martyrology of Tallaght, under October 26, of " Dairinill, 

 Dairbellin, Gael, and Comgell, virgins in Kilmainham." 



' Annals of the Four Masters, i. 769. 



