Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The Miracles of Senan (Author: Charles Plummer)

chapter 4

{editor's section 9}

There was once a temple of Senan's, to wit, Killnagalliach, which of all Senan's churches was his favourite, save Scattery alone. Yet such was the wickedness and infidelity of the people that they left it without rite, or mass, or altar; with wisps of thatch over it, and threshing and parching , and all the most menial offices being done there, as in any common house. The patron saint was highly incensed at this; and this is what he did. One day a woman was parching corn a stone's throw from the East end of the church, and the wind due West, when a sparrow hopped down from the top of the church to where she was, and seized a burning straw in its beak, and hopped on to the church again, and dropped the burning straw on to the thatch, and the church was burnt thatch and stick and stone; . After this the inhabitants of the place proposed to rebuild the church, and the next day they began to make a lime kiln.

{editor's section 10}

However, that very night Senan came to a man of the place named Gilla-Senain O'Hettroman, and said to him: ‘Go tomorrow to the corner of the house of Ni Bruacháin and dig three feet out from the corner, and thou shalt find plenty of

p.17

lime there.’ Gilla-Senain arose the next morning, and took spade and shovel, and dug at the corner of the house, and found the lime there, as Senan had said; and the lime was not diminished by what was taken out. And they carried away as much as they wanted, and built the church worthily, so that thenceforth it was held in due honour.

As to the subsequent history of the lime-kiln:— every kind of disease in man or beast, if only (the patient) were rubbed with the lime, would be healed at once, or if a stone taken thence were heated and put in their drink, it would cure everyone, &c.

{editor's section 11}

A woman in the place had a little lame kid, which had broken two of its legs and its back. She took it to the lime-kiln, and said: ‘Upon my word’, said she, ‘thou shalt not come out, till Senan displays his miracles on thee’. She left it in the kiln that night, and the next day she went to look at it, and found it standing quite healed with a great udder of milk, and the milk healed every illness and every plague in man and cattle, and was carried thenceforth to kings and bishops. Moreover everyone who fasts to God and to Senan on the site of this lime-kiln, and makes his confession afterwards, and receives the Body of Christ, shall obtain any boon he pleases, if it be not contrary to nature.