farming arrangements, and managed the annual ploughing for her, not at Ross Benchuir, but at Cill-Cuach, which was nearer to Saighir. At Kilcoagh by Donard is her Holy Well, Tubar-no-chocha, at which stations were formerly made. The cill is mentioned in a grant of 1173 to the Abbey of Glendalough as " Cell Chuacha." S. Coemgen was probably a nephew, though represented in a pedigree of the Saints as her half-brother; but this is chronologically impossible. On Christmas Eve S. Ciaran said Mass at midnight, and at once departed from his monastery, and walked to that of Cuach, and communicated her and her nuns, and then returned in the morning to Saighir. This would seem to show that for a while Cuach was superior of Killeen, near Saighir, where he had at first established his mother. The same conclusion may be drawn from the escapade of S. Carthagh, his pupil, who seduced one of Cuach's pupils and by her became a father. This also points to close proximity of the houses. Near Ross Benchuir was a rock in the sea to which Cuach was wont to retire at times for prayer. Ciaran is reported to have stepped on to a stone and to have employed it as a boat in which to cross the water to her. Here again, under a fable a simple fact lies concealed, that he was wont to visit his old nurse in her island hermitage, and there minister to her in holy things. One day Ciaran went with a great crowd (multa turma cum eo) to the cell of Cuach, and they were given as a repast a pig's shoulder. And out of that shoulder he made corn, honey, fish and ale." Probably here we have a misunderstanding—she gave him what she had, a shoulder of bacon, and that had to serve the party for lunch in place of the corn, honey, fish and ale they had reckoned on. His turma consisted of nine hundred and forty men, so that the poor little community was hard put to it to feed such a host. 2 Geran, or Cieran, was the priest of Cuach, and when he died, S. Ciaran restored him to life again. One day her monastery caught fire through carelessness, Ciaran himself extinguished the flames, the writer says, through the sign of the cross, probably by throwing buckets of water over the fire. 3 At what date Ciaran removed to Cornwall we do not know. It was due to an arrangement with the kings of Munster, that he should surrender the abbacy to Carthagh, who was of the royal family, so soon as this dissolute youth should have reached the age of discretion and have gained experience. Almost certainly Ciaran would induce his 1-3 These three incidents are related in John of Tynemouth's Life of S. Piran, and are not found in the Irish Lives of S. Ciaran. nurse to accompany him, to become the head of societies for women in the country to which he migrated. Ladock in Cornwall is probably Lan-ty-Cuach, and was one of her houses. The patronal feast is observed there on the first Thursday in January, and this fairly agrees with her festival as marked in the Irish Calendar, January 8. In the Episcopal Registers the church is given as Ecclesia Sanctæ Ladock, Bronescombe 1268, Quivil 1281, Grandisson 1330, 1337: Brantyngham, 1372, 1373, 1391; there is consequently no justification in Mr. C. Borlase supposing that the church was dedicated to a male Saint, S. Cadoc. Ladock is on one side of the dorsal ridge of Cornwall, and Perranzabuloe, the foundation of S. Ciaran, on the other. They are about nine miles apart. But the principal foundation of Cuach in Cornwall was apparently Lanowe. To the north lies high bleak land, with poor soil over slaty rock, rising some five hundred and fifty feet above the sea. This high land drops suddenly, forming a step, and this step is cleft with gullies or combes down which murmur streams to the richer land below. One of these, clothed in gorse and coppice, with spires of lichened rock rising above it, has on the east side a platform of warm red friable rock, dominating the lower land, but sheltered by the hills from the prevailing north-west winds. An ancient watercourse has been cut, leading a stream from the brook to this terrace, where it fills a pool and supplies farm and fields with water. Here is Lanowe, the original site of Cuach's church and monastery. In her day all the high land to the north was covered with oak forest; and tradition has it that it was infested by a wild black boar, that ravaged the pastures and with its tusks gored men and beasts. S. Cyngar, or Docwin, locally called S. Dawe, lived where is now the parish church, and Cuach visited him, but he refused to see her till she had tamed the wild boar. Nicolas Roscarrock, who relates the tradition, says that she did this, and then he opened his cell door and conversed with her. The tradition of the place, at the present date is, that five parishes united to hunt the boar and at last slew it ; whereupon Kewe (Cuach) moved the site of her church from Lanowe to where is now the parish church, a place less exposed to the ravages of wild beasts.1 1 Gilbert, in his Historical Survey of Cornwall, 1820, ii, p. 608, gives the story thus: "The person who showed the author the church declared that this was the figure of a wild boar which in former days had greatly infested S. Kew and the neighbouring parishes, but was at length slain by a man named Lanow in Lanow woods in this parish." In this faint and faded form we have perhaps a reminiscence of the old tale of the Twrch Trwyth, and the depredations of the Irish. Gwyddyl on this coast. In the church windows are the arms of Cavell of Trehaverick, Arg. a calf passant sable; but the villagers persist in believing these black heraldic calves to represent the wild black boar of tradition. The site of S. Kewe is one of the sweetest and loveliest in Cornwall -a narrow valley enfolded by hills, where trees and flowers luxuriate, the haunt of song birds, and where the stream from Lanowe, joined by another, has swollen into a brook much frequented by the azure kingfisher. The church is singularly stately and beautiful, and contains much old glass of the finest quality. In one of the side windows is a figure, presumably of S. Kewe, crowned, with waving golden hair. But Ciaran's little nurse-girl never wore a crown on earth, hers was to be one eternal in the heavens. She is thought to have been buried at Killeen Cormac, near Dunlavin in Wicklow. The name Killeen, like the other by Saighir, points to a foundation by Liadhain, Ciaran's mother. There are several churches in Ireland that look to Cuach as a foundress, and she must have been very active as an auxiliary to S. Ciaran. Kilcock in Kildare was the most flourishing of these. An interesting account of Killeen Cormac, with its ancient graveyard and Ogam inscriptions, is given in Shearman's Loca Patriciana, 1882. Kewestoke in Somersetshire, though now dedicated to S. Paul, by its name seems to indicate S. Ciwa as its original patron. In Brittany, she seems to have had a monastery near Cleguérec. This place was apparently an Irish Colony, for the church was under the invocation of S. Brigid, indeed the parish, Perret, taken from it, bears her name in its Breton form. Here, up to 833, was a little monastery, Lann-ty-Cocan, which in that year was made over to the abbey of Redon, and ceased thenceforth to exist. The place was then called Du Cocan or Ty Coca. The act of transfer was registered in the church porch in the presence of the Mactiern Alfrit, and was written by S. Convoyo, abbot of Redon. In the following century it was devastated by the Northmen and was never refounded. The monastery probably stood by the beautiful lake, des Salles, to the north-east of which rise well-timbered heights. The stream that feeds the lake flows on between hills and through forest to expand once more in the Etang des Forges, and then discharges into the Blavet. Lobineau supposed that the monastery was of SS. Ducocæ. That VOL. II. 1 Cartulary of Redon, p. 354. I. is of the two Saints of the same name, Dua Cocca, the Cuach of June 6, and the Saint of the same name on June 29-though he gives only July 29. But it is much more probable that Ducocca is TyCuacha, as such is the form the name assumed in Cornwall after Lan, at Ladock. Bishop MacTail, concerning whose intimacy with Cuach scandalous reports circulated, died in 548, according to the Annals of the Four Masters, but it is not easy to allow him so long a life, as he succeeded to be Bishop of Kilcullen about 460, following Isserninus. If Ciaran died about 530, we would suppose that his foster-mother departed this life some years earlier. The Holy Well of S. Kewe exists on the glebe in the parsonage grounds at S. Kewe. It is in sound condition, but of no structural interest. Nicolas Roscarrock makes S. Docwin, whom he calls Dawe, to be living as a hermit in the parish, and he says that according to popular tradition she and S. Dawe were sister and brother. Leland calls her Cua. "1 Trearack." "The family of Cavell in S. Cua paroch at S. CIWG, Confessor CIWG was the son of Arawn (or Aron) ab Cynfarch Gul, of the line of Coel Hên.2 Rees places him among the Saints who flourished in the middle of the sixth century.3 Cynfarch was a Northern prince, who married Nyfain, daughter of Brychan, by whom he became the father of the celebrated Urien Rheged. Geoffrey, in his fabulous Brut, says that King Arthur apportioned the districts which he had wrested from the Saxons between three brothers, Urien, Llew, and Arawn. To Arawn he gave Yscotlont or Prydyn, and one of the Triads speaks of him as one of the three "counselling knights" of his court. 4 6 The church of Llangiwg or Llanguicke, in Glamorganshire, is dedicated to Ciwg.5 Browne Willis gives his festival as June 29. The following occurs as the first of the "Sayings of the Wise 1 Itin., ed. Oxf., 1745, iii, p. 7. "" 7 2 Iolo MSS., pp. 108, 146; see also p. 145, where "Cirig is a misscript for Ciwg. 3 Welsh Saints, p. 271. 4 Bruts, ed. Rhys and Evans, p. 194. 5 For an account of the church and parish see W. Ll. Morgan, Antiquarian Survey of East Gower, 1899, pp. 53-9. 7 Iolo MSS., 251. Parochiale Anglicanum, 1733, p. 191. Hast thou heard the saying of Ciwg, The possessor of discretion is far-sighted." From this it would appear that he was a bard as well as Saint. S. CLAUDIA, Matron CLAUDIA, the wife of Pudens, to whom S. Paul sent a salutation in his Second Epistle to Timothy, has been supposed to have been a British princess. She was, possibly enough, the daughter of Claudius Cogidubnus, whom Tacitus speaks of as a British king, and as acting at the same time as an imperial legate. A marble tablet discovered at Chichester commemorates the erection of a temple to Neptune and Minerva by a Guild of Craftsmen, on a site given by Pudens, son of Pudentianus, under the sanction of Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus. The nomen and prænomen assumed by this Briton would indicate the special favour in which he was held by the emperor. Tacitus says that he acted as imperial legate, that is, as provincial governor, over, probably, the Cantii and Regni in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. Martial has an epigram on the marriage of the British Claudia Rufina to Pudens, a member of the Aemilian gens.3 The fact that Claudia was an adopted member of the Rufine family shows that she was connected with the gens Pomponia, to which this family belonged; and it may have been in consequence of this marriage that Pudens joined with Claudius Cogidubnus in the erection of the temple at Chichester. Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, had married a Pomponia, 1 Tac., Agricola, 14. 3 " Claudia cœruleis . . . Rufina Britannis edita." Epig. xi, 34. Diligat illa senem quondam; sed et ipsa marito, Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur anus." Epig. v, 13. |