School: Dún Gar (Frenchpark) (roll number 3961)
- Location:
- Frenchpark, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: Tomás Mac Mághnuis
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0243, Page 279
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)is now lost.
- Tradition has it that the abbey was finally destroyed by a member of the Davis family then serving in Cromwell's army or at least that division of it under the command of Coote. He is supposed to have a cannon on Rath Cruachán and blown the place to smithereens. But as of course they had not such powerful weapons at that time this was impossible. However it would appear certain that it was a member of the family that did blow it up, but as the actual facts later will show at a considerably earlier date. For they got a grant of the abbey lands long before Cromwell's time. However when the friars heard they were about to take possession and lay sacrilegious
hands on the sacred property they immediately made up their minds to go with all their movables to the mother house at Boyle. They collected the sacred vessels, the statuary, pictures, wealth and especially the great bell. They made off across the bog. It was the depth of winter, and the bog wet and marshy in the heat of summer had now become merely part of the flooded river. The bloodhounds of their despoilers were at their heels. Only 400 yards had they gone, when in an effort to elude their
pursuers by travelling between hidden marshes, the weight of their loads and especially of the bell of which(continues on next page)
