King Tewdrig, who had a palace hard by, did not relish the arrival of a host of Irish, and he set upon them and massacred most of them. Kiara, however, was not molested, though her brother was killed. She settled where is now the parish church of Phillack. The scene of her brother’s martyrdom was Gwynear, hard by. She probably did not care to leave the proximity to his grave; she had no one to go with to Armorica, and it seems likely that a larger body of Irish came over shortly after, occupied all the west part of Cornwall, and so made her condition more tolerable. [Illustration: S. ITHA.] XI _S. ITHA_ What Bridget was for Leinster, that was Itha or Ita for Munster; and from the way in which her cult spread through Devon and Cornwall, we are led to suspect that there were a good many religious houses and churches in the ancient kingdom of Damnonia that were under her rule, and looked to Killeedy in Limerick as their mother-house. S. Itha was a shoot of the royal family of the Nandesi, in the present county of Waterford. Her father’s name was Kennfoelad, and her mother’s was Nect. They were Christians, as appears from the fact of S. Itha having been baptised in childhood. She was born about 480, and probably at an early date received the veil “in the Church of God of the clan.” Unfortunately we have not the life of S. Itha in a very early form; it comes to us sadly corrupted with late fables foisted in to magnify the miraculous powers of the saint. She moved to the foot of Mount Luachra, in Hy Conaill, and founded the monastery of Cluain Credhuil, now Killeedy, in a wild and solitary region, backed by the mountains of Mullaghareirk, and on a stream that is a confluent of the Deel, which falls into the Shannon at Askaton. The chief of the clan or sept of Hy Conaill offered her a considerable tract of land for the support of her establishment, but she refused to receive more than was sufficient for a modest garden. Let us try to get some idea of what one of these monasteries was like. In the first place a ditch and a bank were drawn round the space that was to be occupied, and the summit of the bank was further protected by a palisade of stakes with osier wattling. In such places as were stony, and where no earthwork could well be made, in place of a bank, there was a wall. Within the enclosure were a number of beehive-shaped cells, either of wattle or of stone and turf. Certainly the favourite style of building was with wood; but of course all such wooden structures have perished, whereas some of those of stone have been preserved. There were churches, apparently small, and a refectory, bakehouses, and a brewery and storehouses.