Saint Beccan the Blind, February 26

We commemorate Saint Beccan on February 26, to whose name the epithet of 'the blind' is attached in the seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal. His name, however, was preserved in the earliest  of the Irish calendars along with a place name which Canon O'Hanlon argues was in County Dublin:

St. Beccan, or Becanus, The Blind, Probably of Kinsealy, County of Dublin.

This holy man flourished, probably at an early period, for he is registered, in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 26th of February, simply as Beccan, Chind-sali. In the Martyrology of Marianus O'Gorman, at this day, there is an entry, Becanus Kinsalie. It is probable, his place was near the village of Kinsaly, some three miles from Howth, in the present county of Dublin. This saint appears, from the epithet applied to him, to have laboured under the loss of sight. Becan, the Blind, of Ceannsaile, had a festival, celebrated on this day, as we read in the Martyrology of Donegal.

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