Saintly carry on down in St Mullins

 

 

St Moling Turns a farmer to Stone No 11

 

 Now, St Moling was a fair man for the curse himself, didn’t he turn a crowd of locals in the parish of St Mullins into stone because he caught them working on his holy day. Those stones are there to this day,and not a man, woman or child would dare touch them for fear getting into the bad book with the Saint. It was a farmer called Anthony from the parish of St Mullins who had his workers out in the field digging away on St Moling’s day.His wife who was called the “Ramshadh Rua” came along with the dinner at 12.30, as that’s dinner time in the country none of this dinner at eight o’clock at night sure wouldn’t it stick in in your gut and you trying to get to sleep. Dinner in the middle of the day was for the working man it was only the Gentry had the big feeds at night , big fat lads with gout.Well the Ramshadh had a churn of milk with her on the cart when she pulled in beside the lads. They were all sitting around in a circle when suddenly out of the blue who appears but the bauld Moling himself in a bit of a temper.  He demanded to know why they were out working on his holy day after he telling all the local pagans it was a holiday for the lads. A Christian thing these Holidays were,  a new invention. Well Anthony took to his heels and made a bolt for it across the fields, the hair standing up on his head, sure he knew the powers and curses this saint had in his repatoir.  He only made it as far as Dranagh (that’s up on the Black stairs mountain )before the Monk’s curse caught up with him and he was turned into stone known to this day as “Stukan-na-Drana”.  Anthony’s wife took to her heels too. She was a almighty runner but only made it to the hill of Ramshagh,which is called  after her to this day  ” Ramshagh  Rua “. There she stands petrified (that’s turned into a lump of stone). Just ask Michael Boland,the stone is sitting in one of his fields, and that poor creature locked inside it for all eternity. I bet he wouldn’t dare try and shift it, just in case the wily saint is still around. The workers never made it off the ground where they sat in a ring having the dinner (probably a Druid’s ring as old habits die hard). They were turned to stone and so was the donkey and the cart and even the churn of milk. Moling didn’t miss a thing. Those stones remained in that place that was called “Maol Oula”(The Bald place), until some Yahoo dug them up to build houses in Marley ,I wonder how he faired ?