Ireland's Ancient East

Did You Know?

St Moling Turned a farmer to Stone

 Now, St Moling was a fair man for the curse himself, didn’t he turn a crowd of locals into stone because he caught them working on his holy day. Those stones are there to this day. Not a man, woman or child would dare touch them. It was a farmer called Anthony who had his workers out in the field on St Molings 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. She 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. He only made it as far as Dranagh before the Monk’s curse caught up with him and he turned into stone. To this day it is called  “Stukan-na-Drana”.  Anthony’s wife took to her heels too. She was a mighty 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.