Mochua, Kynog and Nixon

It seems Ireland was not fully Christianised until the 8^th century so in the mid-6th century when Mochua and his brother set out west from Dublin along the Sli Mor into the central bog I pictured them as brave pioneers, exploring new territories and encountering possibly hostile natives.   

From their home community at Clondalkin, south of the Liffey, they followed the Sli until it crossed the river at Celbridge. There the spot where Mochua baptised is still remembered and traces of the community he founded can be located on what is now known as ‘Tea Leaf Lane’. Celbridge itself literally means ‘Cell at the Bridge’.

Striking west, Mochua set up a community at Rathcoffey while his brother Garban settled nearby at Clonsanbo at the edge of Ireland’s central wetlands, the Bog of Allen. Mochua himself pushed out into the bog, to the island of what is now known as Timahoe, Tigh Mochua or ‘Mochua’s House’. His explorations seem to have ended there because when he died in 573 it was back in Clondalkin.

Intrigued by the idea of a missionary monk pushing his way west over rivers, through bogs and meeting hostile people, I decided to follow him to Timahoe.  I had already been to Clondalkin, Celbridge, Rathcoffey and Clonshanbo. However at Timahoe my pre-conceived ideas got a shock.

For a start, the holy man honoured at Timahoe is not Mochua but Kynog – there is no church there but the local school and football team have Kynog as their patron and he is generally recognised in the area as the pioneer.

Who was he? His name does not even sound Irish. I took me a while to remember. His original name was Cynog ap Brychan and he belonged to a remarkable family in Wales, with Irish ancestry, who were real frontier missionaries in the coastal areas of Wicklow. I discovered their amazing story after a visit to Kilmacanogue (Church of Canogue/Cynog) near Glendalough so I won’t repeat it here. Yet here he was again at Timahoe, in the Bog of Allen in Kildare!

What did he do there? The earliest church in the area was probably at the now deserted cemetery but there is a sign there claiming it for Mochua by his Historical Society.

There is another cemetery in Timahoe also of interest. The empty looking Quaker Graveyard on the other side of the village has connection with an American President, Richard Milhous Nixon, whose visit there in 1970 is commemorated by a monument.  

His mother, Hannah Milhous, belonged to a Quaker family who had settled in Timahoe on confiscated land after the wars of 1640 but left in 1729 for a better life in Pennsylvania. 

So my trip to Timahoe modified my thinking. Cynog was born (in Wales) in 434 and died in 492 so he would have come to Ireland around the time of, or even before, St Patrick.  He was the real pioneer.  Mochua arrived at Timahoe a hundred years later and may have had only a temporary housie there, as the name ‘House (not ‘Cell ‘or ‘Church’) of Mochua’ suggests.    

I also discovered that Mochua belonged to the nearby north Leinster clan of Uí Chéthig so he was not travelling into completely unfamiliar territory, unchristian and boggy as it might have been.

However he did have the pioneering spirit, as had Cynog before him and the Milhous-Nixons after him.