>MOLING, bishop of Ferns (A.D. 697)
>
>"As is usual with the lives of the Irish Saints, this is clogged with
>many grossly absurd stories which have arisen from the love of humour
>and of the marvellous combined in the Irish peasantry."
>
>Protests to Baring-Gould, please, not to yours truly,
>
With no complaints whatsoever to the learned Oriens, I'm not particularly
impressed with Baring-Gould. I would be very interested to know what
others on the list think of the various dictionaries of saints. So far the
top of my list is David Farmer's Oxford Dictionary of Saints.
What bothers me most about this entry on St. Moling is that Baring-Gould
just insults later legendary additions, instead of considering what might
lie behind them. Here's an alternative entry on Moling:
Moling (Molin, Mullin), Saint
Moling (d. 697) is one of the outstanding seventh-century saints of
Ireland. His fame reached throughout Ireland, but his cult was especially
strong in the Kilkenny area of Leinster. At first a monk at Glendalough,
Moling left to found his own monastery, later known as St. Mullin's on the
Barrow (Tech Moling). Later he is said to have become a bishop at the
monastery of Ferns, where according to report he obtained remission of a
heavy tribute of oxen that the Leinstermen had to pay to their local king.
The extant Lives of Moling have a strongly mythological content.
One can see this from the very beginning of the saint's life: Moling's
father had seduced his wife's sister. The pregnant woman fled in shame,
and gave birth to Moling in heavy snow at night. Fortunately the infant
was protected by angels, and a dove kept the mother from killing herself.
Mother and child then lived for seven years in a cave. According to these
legends, when Moling came to adulthood, his first church was built for him
by a mythological mason, the Gobán Saor, who constructed the building with
wood from the Yew of Ross, one of Ireland's great mythological trees. The
price the craftsman demanded was as much rye as the church would hold, so
the saint told the Gobán to turn the church mouth upward and then produced
a miracle to fill it with the grain. Besides mythical elements, tales of
Moling also emphasize the common Christian theme of the saint who does not
want to draw public attention to his holiness through humility. In a
particularly notable incident, a woman brought her dead child to Moling,
who refused to touch it since he did not want a reputation for raising the
dead. The woman then threw the child's corpse at Moling, who let the body
fall into a river-at which the child came to life, despite the saint's
efforts.
Phyllis
Phyllis G. Jestice
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