on
each side of the entrance a Latin cross is deeply carved in the rock,
while within, at the further side, and opposite the door, a block of stone
four feet high was left for an altar. Above it, a shrine is hollowed out
of the stone wall, and over the cavity is another cross, surmounted by the
mystic I. H. S.

The legend of the cave was told by an old "wise woman" of the neighborhood
with a minuteness of detail that rendered the narrative more tedious than
graphic. A devout believer in the truth of her own story, she told it with
wonderful earnestness, combining fluency of speech with the intonations of
oratory in such a way as to render the legend as interesting as a dramatic
recitation.

"'T is the cave av the saint, but phat saint I'm not rightly sartain. Some
say it was Saint Patrick himself, but 't is I don't belave that same. More
say it was the blessed Saint Kevin, him that done owld King O'Toole out av
his land in the bargain he made fur curin' his goose, but that's not thrue
aither, an' it's my consate they're right that say it was Saint Tigernach,
the same that built the big Abbey av Clones in Monaghan. His Riverince,
Father Murphy, says that same, an' sorra a wan has a chance av knowin'
betther than him.

[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S FACE.]

"An' the big head on the rock there is the divil's face that the saint
made him put there, the time the blessed man was too shmart fur him whin
the Avil Wan thried to do him.

"A quare owld shtory it is, an' the quol'ty that come down here on the
coast laugh if it's towld thim, an' say it's a t'underin' big lie that's
in it, bekase they don't undhershtand it, but if men belaved nothin' they
didn't undhershtand, it's a short craydo they'd have. But I was afther
tellin', Saint Tigernach lived in the cave, it bein' him an' no other;
morebetoken, he was a good man an' shrewder than a fox. He made the cave
fur himself an' lived there, an' ivery day he'd say tin thousand paters,
an' five thousand aves, an' a thousand craydos, an' thin go out among the
poor. There wasn't manny poor thin in Ireland, Glory be to God, fur the
times was betther thin, but phat there was looked up to the saint, fur he
was as good as a cupboard to thim, an' whin he begged fur the poor, sorra
a man 'ud get from him till he'd given him a copper or more, fur he'd
shtick like a consthable to ye till he'd get his money. An' all that were
parshecuted, an' the hungry, an' naked, and Go