Among the names of the native saints commemorated on the Martyrology of Oengus on December 31 we find the Latin name Silvester (Sylvester). The Martyrology of Oengus first commemorates saints Lochán and Enda of Kilnamangh, County Dublin, before moving to a mention of Silvester:

31. Lochan and Endae.
Silvester, noble desire!
from their feast – no very feeble leap
let us strive to step to the calends (of January).

A scholiast note reads ‘Silvester, i.e. a pope of Rome and confessor.’

 The Martyrology of Gorman in its entry for the day hails:

Venerable Silvester whom I name, who after the numbering of the mighty host increased its weight.

December 31 is indeed the feast day of Pope Saint Sylvester I (papal reign 314-335), but I was unaware of any particular connection between this holy pontiff and Ireland (apart from his featuring as one of the saints of the universal church on the List of Parallel Saints.  where his Irish equivalent is Saint Adomnán of Iona) until I read a 1910 article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland which raised the question of the patronage of the church and holy well at Malahide, County Dublin, both of which are dedicated to Saint Silvester. The writing of the article was preceded by a brief contribution from Lord Walter Fitzgerald, detailing his discovery of a will dated 1526 which explicitly cited the name of the church at Malahide, something missing from earlier records:

The Patron Saint of Malahide. The ancient church at Malahide is dedicated to St. Silvester, but it appears to be uncertain whether this was the Palladian saint of that name, who, according to the Annals of the Four Masters, arrived in Ireland in the year 430, and was venerated on the 10th of March, or whether he was the St. Sylvester, Pope and martyr, whose festival occurs on the 31st of December. Probably the former is the more likely of the two, as by him Donard (Domhnach Arta), in the west of the county Wicklow, was founded; and he is also the patron saint (according to Father Shearman’s “Loca Patriciana,” p. 179) of Brannockstown, in the county Kildare, eight miles to the north of Donard, as the crow flies.

Hence it is strange to find in Sir Peter Talbot’s will, which is dated the 12th September, 1526 (and which is given in full in the County Dublin Exchequer Inquisition, No. 3, of Queen Mary), that he desires his “body to be buryed in Seynt fenwe is church in Malaghyde.” Can this be explained?

WALTER FITZ GERALD.

 In response P. J. O’Reilly delivered a full length paper in which he attempted to address the claims of all of the possible candidates for the patronage of Malahide and to cover every possible angle. The  author plumps for the Palladian saint rather than the Pope as the Silvester of Malahide and argues that the mysterious ‘Seynt fenwe’, identified as the original patron of Malahide, is Saint Finnian Lobhar of Swords, County Dublin. It is rather heavy-going getting to this conclusion especially with all of the place name analysis but some dogged scholarship is displayed here, which will be of interest to anyone acquainted with the various County Dublin localities mentioned:

THE DEDICATIONS OF THE WELL AND CHURCH AT MALAHIDE.

BY P. J. O’REILLY.
[Read MARCH 29, 1910.]

THE question of the identity of the patron saint of the church of Malahide, submitted to the Society by Lord Walter Fitz Gerald at the meeting held on February 25th, is one to which no clue was obtained prior to the discovery of the document reciting the terms of Sir Peter Talbot’s will, which Lord Walter Fitz Gerald has just found in the Public Record Office. This will is mentioned in “Fingal and its Churches” (pp. 146, 147) by the Rev. Robert Walsh, whose knowledge of its existence was evidently derived from D’ Alton. The latter says, at p. 173 of his “History of the County Dublin”: “Sir Peter Talbot,… by his will of 1529, directed that he should be buried in the church of Malahide, beside Dame Janet Eustace, and left considerable bequests for the repair and maintenance of its chancel”; but he does not mention the source from which he derived this information, nor the important fact that a will existed which named the patron of the church.

Though the church, or chapel, of Malahide is mentioned in a number of ancient diocesan documents, ranging in date from a list of “The Churches of the Deaneries of the Diocese of Dublin,” circa A.D. 1212-1228, to Archbishop Bulkeley’s Visitation of A.D. 1630, none of these afford the slightest clue to the identity of its patron. Nor do the dedications of the churches now at Malahide help in this respect. That of the Protestant Parochial Church is modern. It was built in 1822, and was dedicated on November 22nd of that year as the church of St. Andrew. The dedication of the Roman Catholic Parochial Church to Pope St. Silvester is of earlier origin, being derived from a neighbouring St. Silvester’s well, which, in my opinion, was not dedicated to Pope St. Silvester. This well was situated towards the centre of the roadway at the top of New Street, the side street running northwards from The Mall, or main street, to the shore, and was in a line with the fronts of the houses on the north side of The Mall. The well is now covered in; but the source supplies a pump erected at the rear of the new National Schools. When I first saw it in the sixties, it was surmounted by a small, slate-roofed, circular stone-house about 12 feet high and nine feet wide, in which a flight of steps descended to the well, the door of which was then kept locked. This well is not shown on the 25-inch Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1868; but it is laid down, unnamed,on the 6-inch one of 1837 in a manner which shows that it was then either covered or enclosed by a small, irregularly oblong quadrilateral structure lying north-west and south-east, the space enclosed being wider at the latter end, which probably was the entrance to the well. D’ Alton, writing in A.D. 1838, describes the latter thus:”In the middle of the town is a well of clear, wholesome water, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and covered with an arched enclosure within which her statue was formerly set.” D’Alton was misled as to the dedication of the well by the facts that, till a comparatively recent period, a patron was held at it on Lady Day in August, which afterwards was transferred to the Sunday following that feast, and that a statue of the Blessed Virgin had formerly been placed there, as is shown by the continuous tradition of the people as to the name of the well, and the dedication of the Roman Catholic church.

Arguing from analogy, I believe that the well was not originally dedicated to St. Silvester the Pope. The Irish holy well usually acquired its reputation for sanctity through a personal connexion between it and some venerated religious, and, in most cases, still retains the name of its real patron. Nevertheless, it is certain that the original dedications of many of these wells have been changed through one or other of the following causes: (a) Numerous rededications by which, after the Anglo-Norman settlement in Ireland, foreign saints specially venerated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were substituted for older Irish patrons through the influence of English-speaking ecclesiastics; (b) errors arising from a similarity of the names, or of the sound of the names, of distinct persons ; (c) coincidences in the dates of festivals of different saints. Earlier dedications to local patrons should, therefore, be looked for in the case of wells dedicated to saints who had no personal connexion with Ireland, or, apart from those dedicated to Christ or the Blessed Virgin, to scriptural personages. In the county Dublin the wells of St. John at Kilmainham, and St. Margaret near Finglas; of St. Anne at Glenasmole, and St. Paul at Killenardan; and of St. James at Jamestown, near Stepaside, are examples due to one or other of the above-named causes. As regards the first, the dedication of the well at the cemetery of the ancient church of St. Maighnen at Kilmainham was evidently transferred from Maighnen to St. John by the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, who held the site of Maighnen’s church and cemetery; while, as St. Margaret’s Church is called Domnachmore Mechanor in comparatively late diocesan documents, it and St. Margaret’s Well were evidently originally dedicated to some St. Mechan or Michan, the change in this case being clearly due to the veneration created throughout Europe during the crusades of the eleventh century for the virgin-martyr of Antioch. St. Anne’s Well and St. Paul’s Well, originally dedicated to Cymric ecclesiastics, Sanctain and Pol-Hen, who settled in this country, belong to the second category, as they are clear cases of confusion due to similarity of sound in Sanctain’s case, and to similarity of name in that of Pol-Hen. The dedication of the well at Jamestown which was transferred from Mochain, brother of St. Kevin of Glendalough, to the Apostle St. James the Less, through the date of the latter’s feastday coinciding with that of St. Mochain, to whom the church and well at that place, anciently Baile Mochainn, were originally dedicated is an example of the third. Such transfers were facilitated by a decreasing use of the Irish language, and an increasing use of English, in the districts in which they occurred; and there seems to have been a stage in the process of transference, which in some cases was prolonged through centuries, during which a well was known by its new name to the English-speaking and by its old one to the Irish-speaking people of the district. In the case of Jamestown, for instance, Archbishop Alan, in the sixteenth centuiy, found the “natives” calling the “Ballyogan” of thirteenth-century diocesan documents by its correct Irish name, Buile Mochainn which the Archbishop renders “Ballymochan” in the Liber Niger.

An instance which seems to me to be analogous to that of the dedication of the well at Malahide occurs in Kerry, where, at the church of Glenbeaghy, or Glanbegh, in Iveragh, the real patron of which is a St. Grigoir, who has left many traces of his presence along the western coast of Ireland, the patron is now held on March 12th, the feast-day of St. Gregory the Great. In this case the fact that Grigoir and his pupil Faelcu visited Rome was the cause of the confusion. Irish ecclesiastics, who in early times penetrated to Iceland and the Orkneys, were termed Pupa or Papa there; and, in Grigoir’s time, those of them who visited Rome were termed Pupa or Papa (Pope) by the Irish on their return to Ireland.”Aelchu, who was named the Pope of Ara,” says MacFirbis, writing of Grigoir’s pupil Faelchu, “was called Papu, i.e., Papa (Pope) . . . because he obtained the Abbacy of Rome after Gregory, and he vacated the abbacy, and went in search of his master across to the west of Europe and to Ara of the Saints.” Another variant of this extraordinary legend, occurring in a note made on the transcript of the Felire of Oengus in the Lebhar Breac (Stokes, Ixiii), at the 12th of March, shows that Grigoir was also believed to have got the “abbacy” of Rome:

“Gregory of Rome,
Grandson of Deda, son of Sen,
Gregory of Ard Mail,
Abbot of Rome of full Latium,
Into Ireland came.”

We find this legend in another form in a Life of St. Enda of Killeany on Aranmore, which states that “Three holy men went from Ireland into Britain . . . after some time they went to Rome . . , the Roman Pontiff died, and the people and the clergy sought to make St. Pupens, one of the three, Pope . . . which he refused to consent to. … At length the three return to Ireland and go to Aran.” This passage, which refers to the ecclesiastics, traditionally known as “The Three Popes of Aran,” together with the others quoted, shows that Faelcu and Grigoir were both “Popes”; “Pupeus,” the name given to him, whom the Romans are alleged to have endeavoured to make Pope, being evidently a Latinized form of Pupa, the title given by MacFirbis to Faelcu, whom he absurdly alleges was made Pope in succession to St. Gregory. That Grigoir was one of the “Three Popes of Aran,” and had been to Rome, is shown by the facts that Gregory, in Irish Grigoir, is alleged by the annotator of the   Lebhar Breac to have come to Ireland, and that MacFirbis states that Faelcu left Rome “in search of his master,” and travelled “across to the west of Europe and to Ara of the Saints.”  At the latter place Gregory, from whom “St. Gregory’s Sound,” between Arranmore and Inishmaen, is named, founded a church called Cill-na-geannanach, or the Church of the Canons, from the fact that he and his small community followed the rule of Canons Regular upon the latter island; and the fantastic story that Faelcu obtained the abbacy of Rome after Gregory is probably a distorted version of a tradition that he succeeded Grigoir as superior of the community at Cill-na-geannanach, Grigoir being confounded in later times, through his title, Pupa, with Pope Gregory the Great, and his patron being held at Glenbeaghy on the latter’s festival.

A similar transfer of dedication, due to a similar cause, seems to have taken place at Malahide. Pope St. Silvester, who had no more connexion with Ireland than St. James the Less, died more than a century before the advent to Ireland of Palladius. His festival, on December 31st, was not made general throughout the church until A.D. 1227; and if a local commemoration of him was introduced to Malahide, it must have been established there at least 900 years after his decease, and would certainly have been held on or near his feast day, not in August. If, therefore, we find that there existed a Silvester who lived, worked, died, and was venerated in Ireland, and who was likely to have had the title Pupa given to him in the period during which it was applied to ecclesiastics who had been to Rome, it is manifest that such a person would be more likely to have been the patron of an Irish “St.  Silvester’s Well” than Pope St. Silvester. We know from the seventh Life of Patrick in  Colgan’s Trias Thaumaturga that Palladius brought with him twelve associates, one of whom was named Silvester, in Irish Siluester, and another Solon, Latinized Solonius. We know that three Palladian churches were founded, one of which called Domnach Airte, by St. Evin, and Dominica Arda, by St. Ailran, and identified with Dunard, in the parish of Redcross and barony of Arklow, County Wicklow was served by Solon and Silvester, who appear to have lived together there after the departure of Palladius, and to have died and been interred there, and whose remains were afterwards exhumed and enshrined, and carried to Inis Baithin, now Ennisboyne, in the same district, where a local tradition asserts that Palladius first landed. The “Tripartite Life,” the seventh given by Colgan, is the only known Life of Patrick which agrees in the mixture of Latin and Irish in its text, and the division of the latter into books, with the description given by Jocelyn of a Life which the latter states was written by St. Evin, who lived in the sixth century. In the introduction to his edition of the “Tripartite,” Dr. Whitley Stokes shows that all extant copies of the latter present philological and historical evidence, which prove that these copies date, at earliest, from the middle of the tenth century. This fact, however, does not prove the non-existence of a sixth-century original, nor that later interpolated pre-tenth-century copies of the latter, on which those extant may have been founded, did not exist. The coincidence between the structure of the “Tripartite” and Jocelyn’s description of that of St. Evin’s work is so remarkable that it seems morally certain that the latter is the basis of the former; and as it seems incredible that a twelfth-century writer should have attributed the authorship of a document written but two centuries before his period to a sixth-century one, and Jocelyn should, in the middle of the twelfth century, have probably been in a position to have known of the existence of both books, had two books of the kind existed, and would probably have described them, I think it is safe to assume that the “Tripartite,” as we know it, represents a sixth-century original, plus the interpolations of four succeeding centuries. Colgan’s words, “Tertia Domnach-Airte, in qua jacent Syluester & Salon, duo Sancti ex Romanis,” when dealing (Acta SS.,p. 249) with St. Evin’s “Life of Patrick,” are therefore important. They show that Silvester and Solon were believed, either by St. Evin, or by some interpolator of his work, who could not have lived later than the tenth century, to have come, like Palladius, from Home. If at any time during the period in which the title Pupa was given to ecclesiastics who had been to Home, a belief obtained in Ireland that Silvester had come from thence, that title would probably have been applied to him; and in later times, when the practice had become obsolete, and the true signification of the title had been forgotten, it would naturally lead, as in the case of Grigoir, to confusion between him and his papal namesake. No acts of this Palladian Silvester remain; the only reference to him occurs in incidental mentions of him in the accounts given of Palladius in the various “Lives” of Patrick, which Colgan quotes exhaustively in his Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae at the 10th of March, the day on which “Silvester Eps.” is commemorated in the “Martyrology of Tallaght.”

In none of the very meagre mentions made of Palladius is there any reference to the latter having visited Inbher Domnainn, the estuary of Malahide; but as the latter was then the best harbour between Inbher Dea (where Palladius landed, and from whence he sailed from Ireland) and the estuary of the Boyne, it is possible that, when leaving Ireland, he may have  put in there to obtain food and water on his voyage along the Irish coast to Scotland, and that Silvester may have landed there and after wards returned to the district which his leader had evangelized, and in which Silvester and Solon ultimately died. It is also possible that he may have accompanied Palladius to Scotland, and, returning to Ireland after the latter’s death, may have landed, and stayed some time, at Malahide. A personal connexion between the Palladian Silvester and Scotland and Malahide is suggested by two entries made by Dempster.The latter, whose proclivity for making Scotchmen out of Irish saints secured for him the title of “the saint- stealer,” is not too reliable as a historian; but he could hardly have been cognizant of the celebration of an Irish local patron such as that held on August 15th, at St. Silvester’sWell at Malahide; no notice of which, as far as I am aware, has hitherto appeared in print. Yet, in his Menologium Scotorum, published in 1622,. he says at June 11th, “In Marria Silvestri S. Palladii Socii,” thus indicating the former existance of a local celebration at that date in honour of Silvester, the companion of Palladius, in Mar in Scotland,, while at August 15th the very day at which the patron was held at St. Silvester’s Well at Malahide he says: “In Scotia Silvestri presbyteri, qui S. Palladii comes contra Pelagianos strenue depugnavit,” as if the Silvester in question had been generally commemorated in Scotland on that day. It is obvious that, if Dempster did any of his saint-stealing in connexion with these entries, and no such Scottish festivals existed, the fact of those entries being made under these conditions would strengthen, rather than vitiate, the evidence they give that the Silvester commemorated at August 15th at Malahide was the  companion of Palladius. It would, if these entries were pure invention, be an amazing coincidence that their inventor should have selected for  one of them the precise day on which a patron was held in Ireland at a Silvester’s Well; while, if stolen, they must, like Dempster’s other pilferings, have been taken from some Irish source and as far as I can ascertain the only Irish source from which his entry at August 15th could have been taken is the celebration at the well in Malahide. As Jocelyn states that the Pailadian Silvester was a bishop, and the only bishop of the name mentioned in the Irish calendars is the “Silvester Eps.” commemorated at the 10th of March in the “Martyrology of Tallaght,” the latter is probably the associate of Palladius, and March 10th his general festival in Ireland; while the celebration at Malahide  on August 15th is probably a minor local commemoration, having a  common origin with that alleged by Dempster to have been held in Scotland on that day.

The transference in the popular mind of the dedication of the well at  Malahide from the Palladian bishop to Pope St. Silvester is accounted for by the belief expressed by Colgan that Silvester came from Rome a belief which would imply the probable assignment to him at a comparatively early period of the title Pupa or Pope, through which, in  later times, he would have been confounded with his papal namesake.

The existence at Malahide of a holy well dedicated to St. Silvester would lead one to expect that the church there would derive its dedication from him. Whether a primitive church connected with Silvester existed there we cannot certainly determine; but that in the early part of the sixteenth century he was not regarded as the patron of the medieval church of Malahide is shown by the words of Sir Peter Talbot’s  will. A recital of the terms of this document, which is dated September 12th, 1526, not 1529, as stated by D’Alton, occurs in a county Dublin Exchequer Inquisition, No. 3 of Mary. In it the testator makes  bequests for the “reparacion” of the church of Malahide and of its chancel, which a century afterwards, at the time of Archbishop Bulkeley’s visitation, were ruinous; and he bequeaths his “damask gowne furred with huge” or “budge” lambskin with the wool dressed outwards, a fur used as trimming on the robes of gentlemen and wealthy citizens in Elizabethan and Stuart times and his “doublet of crymasen velvett,” to make “crosses” for the vestments used in it. The ecclesiological interest of the will, however, lies in these words of its first clause:”I bequeath my soule to Almyghty God and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and my body to be buryed in Saint Fenwe’s church in Malaghyde.” “Fenwe’s” was my reading of the patron’s name from the original inquisition; but Lord Walter FitzGerald, whose experience of writings of the period is infinitely greater than mine, read it “Fenweis Church,” and the latter is the form given in an old transcript of the document. As this name is certainly a mere phonetic rendering of some Irish one, and in the possessive case, in which it appears, the sound of either form of it will equally reproduce the name, I think either reading will serve to investigate the origin of the latter. The first part of this name, Fen, represents Finn or find, a man’s name meaning “fair” or “white,” which is sometimes used alone, but oftener in combination with diminutive or qualifying affixes; the latter being occasionally varied, and the resultant forms applied indifferently to the one individual. Thus, St. Finnian of Moville, who is called Finnic by Adamnan in his “Life of St. Columba,” is also called Findbarr in the same narrative; while Finni, Finne, and Finan are common variants of this name. The phonetic change from Finn to Fen, which obtained in the fifteenth century, is not yet extinct in Fingall, where a local dialect arising from the Danish occupation of that district was in use, and influenced Fingailian pronunciation. Thus, in comparatively recent books, St. Fintain’s tiny oratory at Button, county Dublin, is called “St. Fenton’s” ; and in the mid-fifteenth century British Museum codex of Adamnan’s work, the two references to Finnian of Moville, given as ” Finnic ” in other copies,  are rendered “Fennio.” To ascertain what the affix we or wei in “Fenwe” represents, account must be taken of the fact that there are no characters representing the English v or w in the Irish language, in which the sounds of these are obtained by the aspiration of other letters. The sounds of the English v and w are approximately represented in Irish by an aspirated form; and if “Fenwe” or “Fenwei” was a correct phonetic rendering of the original name, m in its aspirated form must have been the initial letter of the affix attached to Finn or Find to form the name of the patron of the church. As our martyrologies contain no such name, the form given by Sir Peter Talbot is clearly but an approximate phonetic rendering of the original, which probably contained an affix beginning with an initial b, which, following Find, would be aspirated and produce the sound of the English v. The only ecclesiastic I can find in Irish martyrologies whose name fulfils this condition is entered on January 27, as Findbeo Inbir Melgi in the twelfth-century St. Isidore copy of the eighth-century Martyrology of Tallaght; as Finnbeo Inbhir Melge, in O’Clery’s seventeenth-century excerpt from a now unknown copy of the same calendar; as Findbeo, with the gloss of Inber Meilge, in the twelfth-century Martyrology of Marianus O’Gormain; and as Finnbheo of Inbher-Melghe in that which O’Clery finished on April 19, 1630, in the Franciscan Convent of Donegal. While the latest of these calendars is the only one in which the character indicating aspiration has been written, the b of this affix was aspirated at the time the earliest of these documents was transcribed, though the fact was not then indicated by a written character; and the pronunciation of the name was therefore Finnveo.

Neither Finnbheo nor the locality of his church has been identified. Though commemorated in all our martyrologies, he is not even mentioned, much less dealt with, by Colgan, the Bollandists, or O’Hanlon, or any writer on Irish hagiology with whom I am acquainted : while the entries quoted from the calendars appear to be the only reference obtainable to Inbhir Meilge. The latter name was probably applied to a river-mouth or estuary connected either with some tragic episode or with some circumstance suggesting the idea of death: for meilg, a common Irish name for ‘milk,’ is also an Irish name for death, and it forms portion of the name of the little insect which through the faint, ticking noise made by it when boring into wood at night is known in Ireland as the Cluigin Meilge, or Death Watch.

It is obvious that when dealing with an unidentified person or place  concerning whom or which direct and conclusive evidence as to identity is not obtainable, any suggestion of identity must be tentative; and it is in that sense that the following statement of mingled fact and inference should be taken. Two legends are recorded, either of which may possibly have caused the title Inbher Meilge the river-mouth or estuary of death to have been applied as an alias to the estuary of Malahide. Keating, when  relating the landing in Ireland of the Fir Domhnainn, says: “Gann and Seangann [landed] the Tuesday after that in “Iorrus Domhnan”;  and, four lines further, “Fir Domhnainn is given to Geanann and Rughaidhe. And some antiquaries say that it is to Innbhar Domhnann, in the north-west of the province of Connacht, these two came to land with a third of the host, and that it is from them Innbhear Domhnann is called.” That Keating erred in confounding Inbher Domnainn with Ems, county Mayo, and placing it in Conuaught, is certain. O’Curry (MS. Materials, pp. 385, 402, 485) identifies it with the estuary of Malahide, and states that “A singular evidence of this identification remains on the spot itself; for even to this day, the current and eddy below the present [railway] bridge is by the inhabitants called ‘ Moll Downey,’ which cannot possibly be anything else than a corruption of Maeil Domnain, maeil being an ancient name on  the east coast of Erinn for an eddying or whirling current.” The Fir  Domhnainn would hardly select a whirlpool for their landing-place, as it would be too dangerous; and it is difficult to see why this eddy should be connected with them by oral tradition for upwards of two thousand years, when all memory of Inbher Domhnainn, the name of the entire estuary, had been locally forgotten, if the spot in question had not been  the scene of some disaster sufficiently serious to ensure this marvellous survival of an archaic pre-Christian place-name. Had such occurred, the estuary might possibly have been called Inbher Meilge as well as Inbher Domhnainn; but the fact that the former name seems to occur in the martyrologies alone suggests that it may possibly have been an alias borrowed by the martyrologists from some document relating to Irish hagiology, and applied by them to some estuary generally known under another name. Possibly a legend recorded in the Tripartite (Stokes, p. 35) may explain the origin of this name, if it was applied to the estuary of Malahide:

“Patrick had completed his voyage and his vessel took harbour at Inver Dea in Leinster. . . . Then he came to the decision to go and preach to Miliuc … So he showed his mast to land, and went prosperously voyaging eastward along the coast of Ireland till he anchored in Inber Domnan. He found no fish therein and inflicted a curse upon it. He went to St. Patrick’s Island and sent to Inver Ainge. Nothing was found for him there. So he inflicted a curse upon it also, and both are barren.’

It appears to me that the author of this narrative would not hesitate to describe an inbher he believed to be so accursed and barren that fish would not live in it as Inbher Meilye; and that may have been applied by some hagiologist to either the mouth of the Nanny River at Laytown or to the estuary of Malahide.

The curious absence, apart from three martyrologies, of all reference to Finnbheo, which prevented Colgan and the Bollandists from treating of him, inclines me to regard this name also as an alias or alternative name for some one or other of the various ecclesiastics named Finn, or Find, or its alternatives, who figure in our calendars. In endeavouring to estimate the probability or improbability of this assumption, the meaning of the affix beo, the sense in which it was used, and the changes to which it would be liable, should be examined. The sense of this word, which is usually equated with “lively,” would, I believe, be much better conveyed in this case by the word “active,” the meaning given to it in a similar instance by MacFirbis. Like Finn or Find, it was a personal name, which also figures in our calendars as Beoan, little Beo, the name of three bishops commemorated in them; and has its feminine equivalent in Beoin, the name of a virgin saint commemorated on the 1st of February. Like the Find of Findbheo, it was sometimes qualified by having another proper name figuratively indicating some personal quality affixed, as in the case of the sixth-century bishop Beo-Aedh of Ardcarna; Aedh, which literally signifies “fire,” being added to distinguishthe Beo in question as ardent in charity and devotion. I have already mentioned that Findbheo would be pronounced “Finnveo,” but that pronunciation might be affected by one or other of two causes. In Munster, the bh might be eliminated in the spoken language, and Findbheo become Finneo ; but that change would be unlikely to occur in Fingall. There seems to have been another process which this word was liable to undergo when affixed to Find. Duald MacFirbis was a contemporary of Sir Peter Talbot, and wrote his List of Certain Bishops, circa 1655. This document and others appear to furnish evidence that the final o of bheo was sometimes dropped when the word was used, as in the case of Findbheo, as a qualifying affix to a name ending with a final d. This appears from an entry made by MacFirbis, which I believe gives the true sense in which the word was used as an affix in the case of Findbheo and other ecclesiastics. He says, “Aidbhe, i.e. Aedh-beo, for he was active in prodigies and miracles.” This passage is a variant of a gloss made in the copy of the Feilire of Oengus in the Leabhar Breac on the same Aidhbe, bishop and abbot, of Terryglass, at May 24 :”Aidbe, a live fire, ab eo quod vivus in mirabilis.” If this process of eliminating the final o succeeding bhe was applied to Finnbheo, the latter name would be pronounced Finnve; and it seems to me that a transition in the popular pronunciation from Finnve to Finnwe, and its Fingall equivalent, Fenwe, would be not only possible but probable and likely.

I have already mentioned that the apparent absence of all reference to Findbheo, save the bald mention of his name and place in three martyrologies, suggests the possibility of this name being an alias for some person who figures in the latter under one or other of the variants which the name Finn, or Find, assumes ; a condition precedent to any possibility of Findbheo and any of the latter persons being identical being that the Finn in question should in some way be connected with an Inbher. This condition is fulfilled in the case of Finnian Lobhar, or Finnian the Leper, commemorated on the 16th of March. The chief source we have of information concerning him is a Life by an anonymous English author which has been published by the Bollandists, and which Dr. Lanigan has characterized as “a wretched little compilation crammed with fables,” and “written by some Englishman after the settlement of the English in Ireland.” It is a confused tangle of passages from the Acts of various Finnians, blended with the legends relating to Finnian the Leper current at the time it was compiled, some of which latter may have some historic value. This Finnian seems to have been born on “the eastern coast of Bregia,” a description which might apply to Malahide and some statements made in his Life are important as indicating a connexion between him and the neighbourhood of the latter. It alleges that he was educated by a senior named Brendan. Dr. Lanigan (” Ecc. Hist.,” vol. ii., pp. 85, 86, note 29) doubts the accuracy of this statement, which he assumes to refer to St. Brendan of Clonfert. The latter visited Gildas in either Britain or Brittany between A.D. 520 and A.D. 530, and, later in life, some time after A.D. 563, visited Columb in Scotland. It seems, therefore, quite possible that, when returning from either of these visits, Brendan of Clonfert might have spent some time in Ard Ciannachta, the district surrounding Swords and Malahide, in which Finnian the Leper was born, and may have taught the latter. Be that as it may, there is conclusive evidence of the presence in this district of some ecclesiastic named Brendan, and of the probability of some connexion between the latter and Finnian the Leper. There is a “St. Brendan’s Well” in the field south of the roadway at the Protestant parochial church at Coolock (Ord. Survey Sheet, No. 15), four miles south-east of Malahide; and, by an inquisition (38th Charles I.) taken on April 18, 1635, Edward Ophie was found seised of “3 messuages and 100 acres in the town of Cowlocke in the county of Dublin, one acre called the acre of the Donnoghies” (now The Donahies, close to Coolock), and “two parcells of land called Trops geard and Brandon’s parke, containing 9 acres, and one called the Lumpher’s leas, 4 acres.” Here we have a St. Brendan’s “Well and a Brandon’s Park associated with “the Leper’s” leas, or meadows, for the “Lumpher” of this inquisition is evidently a similar corruption to that which has occurred in the case of “the Lubber’s Wood,” which lies less than two miles north-west of Swords, on the south side of the road from the latter to Itathbeal and Saucerstown, close to the latter places, but it is not marked on the Ordnance maps; and the “Lumpher’s” leas and “Lubber’s” wood both probably derive their name from the leper abbot, born in this district, who was so prominently identified with the Monastery of Swords. An “Oldwynning,” mentioned with Rathbeal and  Saucerstown, and the tithes of which, with those of the latter places, are stated by the inquisition of 1547 to have belonged to the (Economy of St. Patrick’s, may be another memorial of Finnian Lobhar. The word finn, which corrupts to whin and winn, and which, in the sense of “white,” forms part of the name Winnings, in the parish of the Naul, county Dublin, is doubtlessly represented by the wynn of “Oldwynnings.” That the name Finnian was liable to corrupt to Winning is shown by the fact that in Scotland the feast of a St. Finnian, alleged, possibly erroneously, to have been St. Finnian of Moville, whose festival is September 10th was celebrated on January 21, at Kilwinning, where there is also a “St. Winning’s Well”; the ancient patron being in after times converted to an annual fair called St. Winning’s Day. Possibly “Oldwynnings” may represent “Old-Finnian’s,” and may be an obsolete name once applied to the Lubber’s Wood. It is also alleged that (having left Brendan and gone to his mother’s country in the south of Ireland, where he remained for many years) “afterwards visiting his own country he came to a place named Sord,” i.e. Swords, about three miles from Malahide. It also quotes a curious legend related in a Life of St. Aedh, or Maedoc, of Ferns, which brings the festivals of Findbheo and Finnian Lobhar together in a way that the entries in the martyrologies would not lead one to expect. Though Finnian is commemorated on March 16th, this legend shows that, when the Life of Maedoc was compiled, a tradition must have existed that the date in question was not that of Finnian’s death. The account given of this vision is, that Finnian saw descending from heaven to the city of Ferns a miraculous chariot, in which were seated a venerable old man dressed as a cleric, and a virgin clothed in a religious habit. Finnian inquired who they were, and the aged cleric told him that his companion was the holy Virgin Brigid, and that he was Maidoc; adding, “My feast shall be celebrated on to-morrow, and the festival of this holy virgin on the day succeeding … be joyful and prepare, for on the day following you shall go to heaven.” As the feast of Mo-Aedh-og, or Moaedoc of Ferns, is January 31st, and Brigid’s is February 1st, the writer of this Life must have believed the 2nd of February to have been the day of Finnian’s decease. The fact that the latter is commemorated in the calendars at March 16th is not incompatible with his decease on the 2nd February. While, as a rule, the dates entered in the latter are those on which the persons commemorated died, festivals were often transferred to other dates for various reasons: these transfers being sometimes purely local. Thus Finian of Lindisfarne is commemorated in Ireland on January 9th, and in England on February 17th, neither day being that of his decease. Colgan’s suggestion that Finnian’s feast was transferred from February 2nd, because the latter is the  date of the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, and that March 16th may have been the date of the translation of his relics, when the latter were exposed to public veneration, seems likely to be the true explanation of the transfer in his case.

On the unreliable authority of O’Donnel’s Life of Columb, Harris, Archdall, and others allege that Columb founded the Church of Swords and placed Finnian the Leper in charge of it. That Columb founded the Church of Swords seems certain from the name, Surd Columb-cille, unanimously given to the place by Irish writers and martyrologists; but that he placed Finnian the Leper in it in immediate succession to himself is problematical. That Finnian figures next to Columb in the ecclesiastical history of Swords, of which Dr. Lanigan believed he probably was the founder, is certain. Though the later martyrologists connect four different churches with him, Swords is the only one mentioned in connexion with him in the Martyrology of Tallaght, and it is mentioned first on the list of Finnian’s churches in all the later calendars; while, apart from the church of Swords itself, the only churches recorded to have existed at that place are a chapel dedicated to St. Brigid, and another dedicated to St. Finnian Lobhar, which stood in its own cemetery near the vicar’s glebe in the south part of the town on the road to Furrows (Mason’s “History of St. Patrick’s,” p. 49). The site of this chapel has hitherto been unidentified, but Mason’s statement gives a clue to its locality. Furrows is evidently the place now known as Forrest and Little Forrest, the road from Swords to which passes a well, named “Slip’s Well” on the Ordnance maps, which lies about 200 yards south of the glebe of Swords. As, some eighty years since, the Ordnance Survey collector was informed that the name of this well was “The Slip’s Well,” and that it was also called ” The Sore-Eyed Well,” it clearly derived the former name from the Irish sliop, a lip or mouth; and as these names show that the well was resorted to for affections of the mouth and eyes, it must have been a holy well, and probably marks the site of the cemetery and chapel of St. Finnian which lay south of the vicar’s glebe on the road to Furrows. The church of Swords is the motherchurch of that of Malahide, and an inquisition of 1547 found that the vicur of Swords was entitled to half the oblations given at funerals at the latter; there was therefore probably some close connexion between these churches, both of which are practically seated on the estuary of Malahide into which the Broadmeadow-Water flows at Swords. This four miles of inlet is subject to strong currents, being mostly dry at ebb-tide, while parts of it are covered by ten or twelve feet of water at spring-tides. These currents render it dangerous, particularly at Muldowney, a name which has been transferred by the people from the maeil, or eddy, to the bank which causes the latter; and Lewis (” Topographical Dictionary,” vol. ii., p. 337) described its channel as narrow and tortuous, and dangerous to navigate without a pilot, in 1837. The Anglo-Irish Life of Finnian, after mentioning the latter’s return to his own country and Swords, states that he often passed to a certain island and visited religious brothers who were there. This island may, possibly, have been Inis-Mac-Nessan, now Ireland’s Eye, but more probably it was Lambay, where Columb founded a church which he left in charge of a deacon, Column; a foundation which would probably be dependent on the church of Swords. Another legend related after the foregoing may, if the estuary of Malahide was called Inker-Meilge, possibly explain how that name came to be applied to it. The Life says (Bollandists, Acta SS., March xvi, p. 447): “quidam discipulus ipsius, nomine Beocan submersus est, vir Dei orauit: qui mersus fuerat viuus surrexit, quod qui viderant glorificabant Deum.” The writer clearly intended to convey that this miracle happened after Finnian had returned to Swords and was governing that monastery; and the dangerous adjoining estuary would be the most likely place for a monk residing there to have been immersed.

It does not follow from the apparent difference in their names that Finnian Lobhar and Finnbheo are not identical. Irish hagiology presents numerous instances of alternative names being applied to the one person, but in Finnian Lobhar and Finn-beo we have, not two names, but one, qualified by different and apparently irreconcilable affixes. The contradiction these affixes imply, if applied to the one person, disappears if, we remember that Finnian whose strenuous career would justify the affix “active” being appended to his name was an extremely aged man at the time of his decease; and that, out of his long life, he suffered from the affection from which he got the title lobhar, for but thirty years before his death. If he was Finnian Lobhar then, and for thirty years before, he had previously had a youth and manhood of, perhaps, forty years or more in which to earn the title Beo. Nor does it follow that the different dates of Finnian and Finnbheo’s commemorations necessarily mean that they were different individuals. Aedh, alias Beoc which, rightly or wrongly, is equated with Beo in the Martyrology of O’Gormain of Lough Derg in Donegal is commemorated on the 1st of January and the 24th July; the former being probably the day of his decease, and the latter the date of the translation of his relics: and our calendars furnish many instances of such dual celebrations. If Findbheo and Finnian were identical, and the latter was connected with the church of Malahide, and a local celebration of him had been established there, the obstacle of the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, which caused his general festival to be transferred to March 16th, would account for the local celebration being held on January 27th, five days before the date of his decease. The facts that Findbheo would corrupt to Fenwe, the sixteenth-century name of the patron of the church of Malahide; that the latter is situated on an inbher on the “coast of Bregia” the district in which it has been suggested that Finnian was born, and with which he was connected in after life; that Findbheo also is referred to an unidentified inbher, mentioned only in the calendars; that Fenwe’s church at Malahide was closely connected with that of Swords with which Finnian was so prominently identified; and that Findbheo’s festival approximates so closely to the day of Finnian’s decease; all indicate a probability that Fenwe of Malahide and the Findbheo of the martyrologies are identical with Finnian of Swords. “Ennio mac h Fiatach” is the form in which the name of the latter’s namesake, St. Finnian of Moville, is given in O’Clery’s excerpt from the missing copy of the Martyrology of Tallaght. This form of the name, in which Finnio has been transformed to Ennio, has been produced by dropping the initial f of Finnio and substituting e for the of Finn: the latter change being similar to that which took place in the case of Fenwe, alias Findbheo, of Malahide. We have therefore two forms of one name, Findbheo and Finnian, both of which might corrupt to Fenwe, for Finnian represents Finni-an, little Finni: an, little, being an affix of endearment attached, like og, to the names of venerated ecclesiastics; and Finni, like Finve, might easily corrupt to Finwe and Fenwe. Nor is the probability of this identity of Findbheo and Finnian lessened by an unobtrusive feature of Fenwe’s church at Malahide. The Anglo-Irish Life of Finnian Lobhar alleges that, while the latter was in Munster, he was made a bishop, which is doubtful ; but the story is nevertheless valuable, for it shows that this tradition existed in the twelfth century. That he was an abbot is certain, and the  only human effigy upon St. Fenwe’s church a mitred head, carved above its southern doorway shows that those who raised the latter believed that either a bishop or an abbot was the patron of the church of Malahide.

As Columb founded a church upon Lambay a foundation probably connected with Finnian Lobhar and the church of Swords a suggestion as to the origin of the name of this island may not be out of place here. In an entry in the Ordnance Survey Field Books, and elsewhere. O’Donovan states that the present name of the island represents Lamb-ey, i.e. Lamb-island ; but the correctness of this derivation, which has been adopted by Dr. Todd, and has since been generally accepted, seems to me to be doubtful. There was considerable intercourse between the coast of Fingal and other portions of our eastern coast and that of “Wales, with the result that the old-Irish word land which, like the Irish tigh, while primarily meaning a house, has been generally applied also to a church has been imported in its Cymric form, lann, and in some cases has entered into the church-names of Fingal where it survives in a corrupted form. A chapel at Bremore, near Balbriggan, was anciently named Lannbeachaire, the church of the bee-man, because of some bees brought from Wales by St. Modomnoc, and left there by him with St. Mollaga, who was its patron. This chapel is called “Lambeecher” and “Lambecher” in old English diocesan documents. In another Fingallian instance lann has been more effectively disguised. An inquisition taken at Lusk on January 17th, 1542, mentions “Loghchynny and Lamlotterie.” When a second inquisition was taken in 1687, this place was still “Lamlottery”; but when a third was taken on September 15th, 1695, it had become “Drumlottery als. Lamlottery,” and this misleading name, Drumlottery, is that by which this place, a townland in Lusk parish, near Loughshinny, is now known. The lam of this place-name, like that of Lambecher, is clearly a corruption of lann, while “lotterie” or “lottery” represents a diminutive of leitir, a damp slope or hillside, a word anglicised “lattery,” the name of a county Antrim townland, which is combined in that form with lann in the present name of this Fingallian little-wet-slope of the church, called Drumlattery in the Towuland Index of 1861. That in this case lam is a corruption of the Welsh lann is shown by the mention of a place called “Lanie” in an inquisition taken of the possessions of theMonastery of Holmpatrick at the time of the dissolution. This place now divided by the parochial boundary of the parishes of Lusk and Holmpatrick into two townlands adjoins Drumlattery, extending eastwards from the latter to the sea; it is now named Lane, and was certainly originally part and parcel of Lamlottery. The corruption of lann to lam is not peculiar to Fingall or Ireland. Lambeg, the name of two townlands and a parish near Lisburn, was called ” Landebeg,” a name which preserves the old-Irish form of the word ; and Lann Abhaich, the Church of the Dwarf, near Glenavy, county Antrim, corrupted into Lenavy, Lynavy, Lunavy, and (in a visitation of 1661) Glanavy. The name of the Scottish island, Lamlash, which is called Malas-eyjar, Malas’, or St. Molaise’s, island, in the Saga of Hacon (” Icelandic Sagas,” Kolls Series, vol. i. p. 349), clearly represents Lann Molaise, while that of Lumphanan, in the diocese of Aberdeen, is probably a corruption of Lann Finan, as it is believed to have been dedicated to Finnian Lobhar, of Swords, who was also commemorated at Kilfynan, Elan-Finan, Mochrum, Monymusk, and Migvie in Scotland.

Apparently the first written mention of Lambay is the Latinized form, Lambeia, which appears in the confirmation given by John, when Lord of Ireland, to the Archbishop of Dublin in A.D. 1184, and also figures in that given by Pope Innocent III to Archbishop Henry de Loundres in A.D. 1216. It is remarkable that for some time after these documents were published the ancient Irish name of the island continued to appear in diocesan documents concurrently with the later foreign name which was consistently and unanimously ignored in later times by Irish scribes; there was no abrupt disuse of the older name, but a period during which the use of the latter overlapped that of the newer one. Thus, while we find the island called “Rachrauini” in the Bull granted by Pope Alexander III to St. Laurence O’Toole in 1179, five years before John’s first confirmation of 1184, we also find it called “Rechan” by Pope Urban III in 1186, and by Pope Celestine III in 1192, and “Rochen ” in an Inspexium made in 1496 of John’s second confirmation of A.D. 1202, both of these forms being renderings of the Irish Reachran so that the use of the Irish name survived the first appearance in English diocesan records of the newer one by at least eighteen years. On the surface, the “Lambei” of John’s first confirmation appears to represent a combination of the English lamb and the Danish oe or ey; but it should be remembered that the place-names given in diocesan documents dating from after the death of St. Laurence O’Toole were renderings given by Anglo-Norman churchmen ignorant of Irish and of the meanings of Irish place-names, and that these renderings were sometimes very crude phonetic imitations of the latter. As the sound of the corruption lam and that of the English lamb are practically identical, an Anglo-Norman cleric confronted with a name in which lam was prefixed to the Danish ey might be pardoned for concluding that it represented lamb, and excused for correcting the defective orthography of the “natives” by adding a final b to it and making the island’s name Lambei. If, before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, the island had been known to the Irish generally by the Irish equivalent of its present name, it would have been called Uan-inis; while if it was known to the Fingallians by the Irish-Danish equivalent of that name, they would probably have called it Uan-ey; but as no trace exists of such names, and Irish writers from the eighth to the eighteenth century unanimously mention it by variants of its ancient Irish name, it seems to me that the inference to be drawn is that the name “Lambei” is either an Anglo-Norman introduction, or else an Anglo-Norman version of some Irish-Danish Fingallian name which they found locally applied to the island at the time of their arrival. The hypothetic assumption that in the middle of the twelfth century, and less than twenty years after the Anglo-Norman capture of Dublin, an island lying off a district the speech of the inhabitants of which was an Irish-Danish dialect that existed in a modified form till comparatively recent times, should be known by a name one half of which was English pure and undefiled, appears to me so exceedingly improbable as to be untenable. Apart from its improbability, the Lamb-island theory has the defect that, lambs being likely to be sent to most fertile islands near the Irish coast as well as to Lambay, if an island of the size of the latter had really had its name changed because of lambs being sent to it, we should expect to find a multitude of Lamb-islands around the Irish coast. On the Ordnance Survey maps four Lamb-islands are laid down, and a remarkable feature of these is their diminutive size. They range in area from a nominal 7 acres in the case of a Kerry islet (Ordnance Survey Sheet No. 78), the greater part of the area of which is indicated as bare rock; to a Galway islet (Ordnance Survey Sheet No. 1 12) containing 2 roods, 7 perches, and a little rock among the Muglins off Dalkey Island, county Dublin ; from which I would infer that, in these cases, Lamb Island is a modern name applied by English-speaking people to islets so small that they could not furnish sustenance for sheep, and a few lambs were consequently placed upon them. If Lambay did not get its name through being a feeding-ground for lambs, the name must have some other meaning; the presence in it of ey shows Danish influence, and the name, whatever it may represent, existed in pre-Norman times. The absence from Irish records of any name for this island but Reachran and its variants, and the presence in its present name of the Danish ey, coupled with the facts that in the sixth century St. Columb founded a church upon it for Colman, son of Roi; that in A.D. 832 Tuathal MacFeradhaich was abbot of Reachran and Durrow, a Columban monastery; that a church appears to have existed on it down to the fourteenth century, when a patent of confirmation for a chantry on the island was granted in 1337; and that a patron which in later times was transferred, to the Feast of Corpus Christi (the Thursday after Trinity Sunday) was formerly held there at Trinity Well on Trinity Sunday; suggests that Lambay probably represents Lam-ey, and that the latter was a locally applied corruption of Lann-ey, Church Island, dating from the period intervening between the Danish and the Anglo Norman settlements in Fingal.

It is strange that, though the island is portion of a Danish-settled district, no mention of it but one appears to occur in ancient Norse or Danish literature; and the identification in question is circumstantial rather than certain or conclusive. From evidence afforded by the context of the poem, the best Norse and Danish students of the sagas are inclined to regard Lambay as being the scene of a sea-fight, described in verse 19 of the Icelandic Saga, Krakas maol eller kvad om Kong Ragnar Lodbrok (C. C. Rafn, Copenhagen. 1826) as having occurred at Lindiseyri, a name which Rafn translates into Danish as Lindesore, the Strand of the Island, or Strand Island.

The names Dalk-ey, Lamb-ey, and Ireland’s-ey seem to me to be the result of a grafting upon Irish names of the Danish ey as a substitute for inis, and to show that ey, a variant of the Danish oe, was probably the Fingallian word for island; but we have no trace of lindes in Fingall or elsewhere in Ireland. If the name given in the Icelandic Saga was applied in either its Norse or Danish form to Lambay, and if, as seems quite possible in that case, traditional remembrance of it existed among the first Danish settlers in Fingal, in later times, when their descendants had lost the language of their ancestors and a local Irish-Danish dialect had been substituted for it, ore, or eyri, might be confounded with oe or ey; and the Norse or Danish word for “strand,” which forms the termination of “Lindiseyri” and “Lindesore,” might have been metamorphosed into the Fingallian word for “island,” which forms the termination of Lambay. Had this occurred, the meaning of lindes must also have been forgotten, and, as a church existed on the island, lindes might have been corrupted into land or lann, examples of the application of which to churches occur in the immediate neighbourhood of Lambay.

In this way a Fingallian corruption of a Norse or Danish name applied to the island by the first Danish settlers in Fingall may have been established, and this may have locally changed the island’s name from Reachran to Lann-ey, and may later on have resulted in the corruption lam being substituted for lann, and Lam-ey made the island’s local name and the basis on which the present name was founded. The probability that something of this kind happened, and that “Lambay” is the corrupted Irish-Danish descendant of some Danish name, is strengthened by the fact that the Irish never used or recognized the use of this name, which was certainly a local one of Irish-Danish coinage.

JRSAI Vol 40 (1910), 147-165

Since  there was a mention of Father Shearman’s Loca Patriciana in the sources above, I append his view of the patronage of Malahide:

ADDENDUM TO THE NOTES ON THE CHURCHES OF PALLADIUS.

Some vestiges of the memory of St. Sylvester of Domnach Arda may be perhaps traced in connexion with Brenockstown or Brannoxtown, in the Co. Kildare. This ancient church, situated on the banks of the Liffey, is now included within the demesne of Harristown. Its Celtic name was Tech-na m-Bretnach, i. e. the church of the Britain or Welchman. In the Bull of Alexander III. which enumerates the churches belonging to Glendalach, it appears as “Technabretnas;” and in a grant made by the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick’s in Dublin, to William, Earl of Pembroke, A. D. 1230, of the church of Yago or Donoughmore, the villa of Osbert de Rathmeth, supposed to be this church, was excepted; it still belongs to the Economy of St. Patrick. The Celtic name is evidently a very ancient one, and its patron, St. Sylvester is more likely to have been the Palladian missionary of Donard, rather than the Pope and Martyr of the same name. The village annexed to this church was sometimes called Vesterstown, from the patron saint. About four miles east of this place over Holywood glen there is a wild ravine in the spur of Church mountain, called “The Welchman’s Glen.” It is a wild and lonely nook, terminating in an immense mound of rocks and boulders, so weird and gloomy, well suited to be selected as a place for pious retreat. Whether it got its name from any of the British pilgrims of Tech na Bretnas is beyond investigation. The old parochial church of Malahide is dedicated to St. Sylvester. The 31st of December is the day assigned for the commemoration, which is that of the Pope and Martyr of that name. Could the Palladian Sylvester have been with St. Patrick in his voyage from Wicklow to Malahide, where he landed, as the Tripartite Life states? a fact which is supported, by the name of a holy well in the town called “Sunday Well.” May it not be allowable to conjecture that the Palladian Sylvester had been left here by the apostle in charge of the few converts we may suppose he made during his brief stay?

Rev J.F. Shearman, ‘Loca Patriciana’ The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, Volume 3 Part II (1875), 421.

I haven’t seen any more recent re-examination of the question of Malahide’s patronage. O’Reilly’s 1910 paper certainly makes a valiant attempt to cover all the bases but it really boils down to whether we see Saint Silvester of Malahide as a reflection of Norman interest in the fourth-century pontiff whose name is found on the Irish List of Parallel Saints or whether we see him as the Bishop Sylvester, associated with Saint Solon, who came to Leinster as part of the Palladian mission. I can see a case for both, but it would be equally interesting to know when the name of Saint  Silvester came to displace the mysterious ‘Saint Fenwe’, who was the patron of Malahide’s church as late as the early sixteenth century as evidenced by the will of Sir Peter Talbot.

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