Illogan was son of Cormac, King of Leinster. Piety ran in the family.
Cormac abdicated and assumed the monk's cowl in 535. The sisters of
Illogan were Derwe and Ethnea, who accompanied him to Cornwall, and are
numbered with its saints. He was father of S. Credan of Sancreed.
Phillack is S. Piala, the sister of Gwynear (Fingar). S. Elwyn is but
another form of the name Illogan. Erth, as already said, was father of
S. Euny; he was a disciple of S. Brendan, the voyager, and was nursed
by S. Itha, who was a woman almost as famous in Ireland as S. Bridget,
and who has churches in Cornwall and Devon. S. Ives is really S. Hia,
an Irishwoman. Zennor is, perhaps, dedicated to a disciple of S. Sennen
of Land's End, the very woman about whom Tom Moore wrote his song of
"The Saint and the Lady." S. Just was the deacon of S. Patrick, and he
was S. Kieran's tutor. Sennen is Senan of Inscathy, in the Shannon. S.
Levan was metal-worker for S. Patrick, but in holy orders also. S.
Burian was the female disciple of S. Kieran. Germoe was a bard, and an
intimate friend of Kieran, and so we see him planted near his friend,
who was at Perran-uthnoe. Breage was a disciple of S. Bridget and a
friend of S. Kieran. Crewenna was another Irishwoman. Sithney is Setna,
a disciple of S. Senan. S. Ruan, in the Lizard district, and S. Kea, on
the Fal--Irishmen as well--I have spoken of them elsewhere.
But along the south coast are some settlements of a different kind.
Paul is Paul of Leon, a Briton, who came there to visit his sister,
Wulvella, at Gulval before he crossed into Brittany; and Towednack is
not an Irish foundation.
Senan and Kieran, or Piran, were such allies that the former was wont
to call the latter "his inseparable friend and comrade." It is
therefore no wonder that we find settlements of the two in West
Cornwall together.
Senan and Kieran probably came to Cornwall some years later than Hia
and Breaca, Fingar and Piala. Senan was very much attached to S. David,
and both are said to have died on the same day in the same year.
As Sithney's mother was a sister of Non, the mother of S. David, it is
possible that David may have induced his cousin to study with his
friend Senan, and that when Senan came to Cornwall he hoped that
Sithney would be able to smooth his way, as an aunt of his was queen
there. This I have already pointed out.
It is noteworthy that Sithney parish is close to that of his first
cousin Constantine.
The key to the Land's End district is Penzance. This is a comparatively
modern town, and it was but a village in the parish of S. Madron, with
a little chapel of S. Anthony on a spit of land running into the bay,
till incorporated by James I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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