Project Gutenberg's The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore, by Anonymous

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Title: The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore

Author: Anonymous

Translator: P. Power

Posting Date: August 5, 2008 [EBook #823]
Release Date: February, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF ST. DECLAN OF ARDMORE ***

Produced by Dennis McCarthy

LIFE OF ST. DECLAN OF ARDMORE

(Edited from MS. in Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels).

Translated from the Irish With Introduction

by Rev. P. Power, M.R.I.A.

University College, Cork.

INTRODUCTION

"If thou hast the right, O Erin,
to a champion of battle to aid thee
thou hast the head of a hundred
thousand, Declan of Ardmore"
(Martyrology of Oengus).

Five miles or less to the east of Youghal Harbour, on the southern
Irish coast, a short, rocky and rather elevated promontory juts, with a
south-easterly trend, into the ocean [about 51 deg. 57 min. N / 7 deg.
43 min. W]. Maps and admiralty charts call it Ram Head, but the real
name is Ceann-a-Rama and popularly it is often styled Ardmore Head. The
material of this inhospitable coast is a hard metamorphic schist which
bids defiance to time and weather. Landwards the shore curves in clay
cliffs to the north-east, leaving, between it and the iron headland
beyond, a shallow exposed bay wherein many a proud ship has met her
doom. Nestling at the north side of the headland and sheltered by the
latter from Atlantic storms stands one of the most remarkable groups of
ancient ecclesiastical remains in Ireland--all that has survived of St.
Declan's holy city of Ardmore. This embraces a beautiful and perfect
round tower, a singularly interesting ruined church commonly called the
cathedral, the ruins of a second church beside a holy well, a primitive
oratory, a couple of ogham inscribed pillar stones, &c., &c.

No Irish saint perhaps has so strong a local hold as Declan or has left
so abiding a popular memory. Nevertheless his period is one of the great
disputed questions of early Irish history. According to the express
testimony of his Life, corroborated by testimony of the Lives of SS.