St. Lughaidh of Cluain Fobhair, August 6

August 6 is the feast of an Irish saint with an ancient name - Lughaidh. He is associated with a locality called Cluain Fobhair. Despite the fact that he appears on the earliest calendars and that the seventeenth-century hagiologist,  Father John Colgan, intended to include him in his work, both the man and the place are impossible to identify with any certainty, as Canon O'Hanlon explains:

St. Lughaidh, of Cluain Fobhair.

The present saint most probably flourished before the tenth century, for his name is commemorated at this date, in our most ancient Irish Martyrologies. It seems to have been Colgan's intention to have edited the Acts of St. Lughidius, on this day, as would appear from the posthumous list of his MSS. He was connected with a place, designated Cluain Fobhair. There is a townland called Cloonfoher, in the parish and barony of Burrishoole, in the County of Mayo; a Cloonfore, in the parish and barony of Rathcline, in the County of Longford; a Cloonfower, in the parish of Termonbarry, barony of Ballintober North, and County of Roscommon, as also a Cloonfower, in the parish of Kilkeevin, and barony of Castlereagh, County of Roscommon. Those denominations are all equivalent to Cluain Fobhair. The Martyrologies of Tallagh and of Donegal mention, that at the 6th of August, veneration was given to Lughaidh, of Cluain Fobhair. In the Irish Calendar, preserved in the Royal Irish Academy, there is a similar entry.






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