Browse Items · Digital Derg: A Deep Map

St. Patrick's well at Tullaghan

"St. Patrick’s Well at Tullaghan has a legend. St Patrick stopped the night in a house near a mountain. The woman told him not to look at the light on the mountain, but he went up and saw a serpent and when he struck it, St. Patrick’s Well sprang up.…

Tags: blood, Bundoran, County Donegal, etymology, Folklore, holy well, mountains, St. Patrick, Tullaghan

Keeronagh, the Devil's mother

"They here shew a bass relief of Keeronagh, the devil's mother, rudely done on a coinstone of one of the chapels, a figure somewhat resembling that of a wolf, with a monstrous long tail and a forked tongue..."

Tags: blood, Caoranach, Clogher, Dabheoc's seat, etymology, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Folklore, Keeronagh, monster, mountains, mythology, Philip Skelton, pilgrimage, Protestant critique, stonework

Lough Derg and its islands

"In the county of Donnegal, at the distance of four miles from Lough Earn, and in the midst of mountains and morasses, extending every way to a considerable distance..."

Tags: anticlericalism, Clogher, corruption, etymology, islands, mountains, Philip Skelton, pilgrimage, Protestant critique, Saints Island, Station Island

"The mark of St. Patrick's knee"

An account of Lough Derg from a late-nineteenth-century pilgrim.

Tags: description, etymology, Fair Lake, Irish Monthly, miracle, monster, pilgrimage, purgatory, Red Lake, rocks, St. Patrick, Station Island

Fair Lake, Lake of the Cave, Red Lake

"The original name of the lake was Finn-loch - the Fair Lake. Those who have visited Lough Derg in the summer and looked on its natural beauties may well approve of the name given by our Pagan ancestors..."

Tags: etymology, Fair Lake, Irish identity, Irish language, Lake of the Cave, Margaret Gibbons, monster, Red Lake, St. Patrick, stone carving

"A very strange Story hath been invented"

A critique of St. Patrick's Purgatory and Catholic pilgrimage in general.

Tags: Caoranach, cattle, eighteenth century, etymology, Fair Lake, Fenian Cycle, Fionn mac Cumhaill, giants, imagination, John Richardson, legend, myth, Protestant critique, Red Lake, superstition

Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the worm of Lough Derg

O'Donovan's account from a local of the origin of Lough Derg's name in a story from the Fenian Cycle

Tags: etymology, Fair Lake, Fenian Cycle, Fionn mac Cumhaill, John O'Donovan, lake, letters, mythology, nineteenth century, ordnance survey, Red Lake, worm

"In media lacus"

"This shews that Saints island is the one on which the monastery, because the present station does not contain 10 acres. There is however a mistake in the phrase 'in media lacus' for Saints island is very near the land…"

Tags: etymology, John O'Donovan, Latin, letters, movement of Purgatory, nineteenth century, ordnance survey, origin of purgatory, purgatory, Saints' Island, Station Island

Sibby's moat

"There is a moat or mound in the townland of Cullion where a woman named Sabina did penance on the way to Lough Derg. She used to sleep on this mound the night before she went no matter whether the weather was wet or dry. It is still called Sibby's…

Tags: Cullion Townland, dryness, etymology, Folklore, moat, mound, pilgrimage, place name, Sibby's moat

The origin of Lough Derg's name

"There are two different opinions to account for the meaning of the denomination, Lough Derg..."

Tags: Annals of the Four Masters, blood, bogland, colour, Daniel O'Connor, etymology, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Folklore, John O'Donovan, pilgrimage, place names, Royal Irish Academy, St. Patrick, water, wine

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