A Scottish Ghost

Maybe I am getting addicted to old Irish graveyards, especially those lonely ones in the countryside that are well-tended and have a sense of mystery about them.

One such is at Cloncurry, at the edge of Meath on the old N4.  Its sunken entrance path leads to ancient ruins and a mortuary chapel of the once locally dominant Aylmer family. A Norman Motte mound with a scarecrow-like tree on top looks down on it from the next field.      

But what intrigued me there was the possibility that it was founded by St Ninian, the ’St Patrick of Scotland’. Not just that, it was built on the same lines as his famous Candida Casa (White House) and dedicated to the same patrons, ‘St Martin of Tours and the Blessed Virgin’.

Ninian (360 – 432) founded a community near Galloway based on the ‘Desert Fathers’ teaching of Martin of Tours. By the 6th century it had become a leading Anglo-Saxon centre of learning. A number of future saints of Ulster went there to study.      

The suggestion that he actually travelled to Ireland and founded a similar ‘White House’ at Cloncurry was made by the famous Protestant historian James Ussher (1581-1656). He explained that Ninian’s mother came from Ireland and made her son promise that someday he would bring the Christian message there. If he did, he would have arrived before St Patrick and Cloncurry church would be one of the earliest Christian centres in the country.

Even though it is hard to image it now,  Cloncurry flourished for many centuries.  ‘The Martyrology of Tallaght’ has an early entry of a saintly ‘Monenn Cluana Conaire’ and the Martyrology of Donegal noted the death of  ‘Maoineann, Bishop of Cluain Conaire, in the north of Ui Failan’.

However in his ‘Dictionary of Irish Saints’ Prof Padraig O’Riain says that ‘the evidence is slight’ for a Ninnian connection. So the secret of Cloncurry remains unsolved.

Yet, it is worth a visit. Besides the church ruins, the intact Aylmer mausoleum is a reminder of a powerful local family once torn apart by conflicting English and Irish loyalties and the tree on its nearby motte mound will be watching you.