A Simple Irish Parish

Every town and parish in Ireland has a story if you only take a minute or two to listen to it.

Take Killanny for example, and don’t be put off by first impressions.  All there is to see is a church on a mound (a genuine Monaghan drumlin) with a national school and children’s playground below it. No shop or pub.

It would seem an uncomplicated place but asking about it soon brings up a number of questions.

How come half of it is in Monaghan (Ulster) and half in Louth (Leinster)? There was a practice in Ireland never to split a parish when county boundaries changed.

Why is the name of the parish St Enda’s  (Killanny or Cill Eanaigh means Church of Enda)  while its patron is St Ultan?   

Enda is no obscure saint. He is the famous ‘founder of Irish monasticism’, born in Killanny in 450. After life as a warrior and traveller in Ireland and abroad he founded a community on Arran that became the celebrated training school of many early Irish saints.

As to Ultan, there is doubt as to whether he is the famous Ultan of Ardbraccan who died in 657 or (more likely) a less well-known local bishop and friend of Clogher’s St Macartan who died in 506. 

In fact the one who is said to have founded the first church in the area is St Patrick. His church at Annahean was on the Monaghan side while Ultan’s, not far away, is in Co Louth.

Of course at that time there was no Monaghan or Louth.  If anything it was the old Kingdom of Oriel. When the Anglo-Normans came they divided the Irish kingdoms into counties and turned the traditional Irish local divisions of tuath into parishes.   

So the two church-parishes must have come together before the Normans set the boundaries of Monaghan and Louth in 1585. The name Killanny prevailed for the combined parish, maybe as Enda was the more senior saint though Ultan is more warmly remembered today  

There was another saint there too -- Fanchea, sister of Enda, who became a Christian before him and founded a convent near Enniskillen.  One day when Enda, in his warrior youth, was on his way home from battle he visited his sister’s convent and she persuaded him to become a Christian. 

The two are shown together (and also meeting on the road) in a Harry Clark stained glass window in nearby Carrickmacross church. (The parish priest who commissioned the window happened to be from Killanny.)

Today the people of Killanny are proud of their local saints but are vague about their background. Those spiritual ancestors are reminders of a proud past and give a reassuring, if remote, sense of continuity.   

Photos: Enda and Fanche in Carrickmacross church;