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LEGENDS OF ST. COLUMBKILLE OF GARTAN.
ST. COLUMBKILLE was travelling through Monreagh, near Rathmullen, to Donegal, when the place was thickly inhabited, and no one would give him bite or sup. He cursed them and said, "A time will come when one man will possess all, and then there will be lots to eat for the wayfarer." The curse has been fulfilled,—one person now possesses all.
The saint on his travels came to Fadda lough in Fanad, the tract between Mulroy and Swilly Waters, and found a man fishing, who he asked for a fish. The man replied that he had not caught any. This the saint did not believe, and said, "No one will henceforward catch more fish that you have now caught." The man had not caught a fish, and no one has since caught one there. [Query: Is not this very similar to the curse of the "barren fig-tree?"]
The saint had a hermitage in the lake, now called Lough Columbkelle, a little to the eastward of Ballaghnagalloglach (anglice, ford of the swordsmen), now Millford. He lived on the fish he caught there; but a pagan used to come and poach, notwithstanding that he was warned off time after time by the saint. At last, one day the saint said, "You may catch three fish, but a devil a bit will you catch more if you fish from morning to night." Since then any one going to fish there will easily catch three fish, but never more.
Gartan Clay. (Folk-Lore Journal, vol. iii. p. 275.)—Although this clay is commonly reported to have been blessed by St. Columbkille the O'Freels, whose territory by the ancient map lay about Gweedore and Gweebarra, claim that an ancestor, Termear O'Freel (O'Freel of the Sanctuary), built the church, made the well, and blessed the clay. When creating the well he struck the solid rock, and said, "Hence-
