The Legend of Cillstifiann
Compiled by P.F.Byrne
According to the Annals of the Four Masters, an earthquake occurred in West Clare almost 1,000 years ago, splitting the land between the Cliffs of Moher on the north and Baltard Cliffs on the south, writes B.B. of Ennis. The subsequent tidal wave engulfed the whole district between these two headlands, and the Atlantic is now rolling over what was once dry land.
One of the many hamlets to be buried wirh its people in that disastrous upheaval was Cillstifiann, and though the names of the other submerged places have long since been forgotten, Clillstifiann lives on in the minds and tongues of the West Clare people to this day.
Conversation
They will tell you with utter conviction that time and time again the ghost town of Cillstifiann with its monastery and clustering houses has been seen in the clear waters of the bay south of Lahinch and that its appearance has signalled death and disaster to those who have witnessed it.I attributed such stories to the vivid Celtic imagination until I had a certain conversation with an old fisherman of the district some years ago. Since then I don't feel so smugly sophisticated, but judge for yourselves. I'll give it in his own words as nearly as I remember them.
"One fine summer's day," he began, "when I was a lad of 12 or so, I was out in the fishing boat with my father and two neighbours. The sea was like a duckpond and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We were all minding our own business when the young man in the stern called out sudenly, 'Cillstifiann! Cillstifiann! Oh God, have mercy on us'. His eyes were riveted on something in the depths of the sea and his face was the colour of clay. No one got time to say another word. A mighty wave rose up like a mountain out of that calm sea and bore down on us in deathly silence. I felt my father's strong grip on the collar of my jersey before we were blinded and almost smothered as the wave rolled over the deck and subsided as quickly as it had arisen.
"When we could see again the bay was as calm as it had been before the freak wave hit us, but Matt was gone from the stern as if he had never been there before. We searched for him for hours and every boat in the bay was in the search before the day was out, but his body was never recovered. The rest of us saw nothing that day but the rocks and the seaweed. Matt did, I know it.His sudden prayer to God for mercy was the result of his glimpse of Cillstifiann."
I was convinced that my old fisherman was utterly sincere in his belief that Matt had seen the ghost town before he was drowned.
Sunken aspect
The fact of the earthquake burying the town and its inhabitants under the sea is easily credible. You only have to notice the sunken aspect of that broken rocky coast between the towering cliffs of Moher and Baltard to guess that the sea there could have been part of the mainland once. And equally true could have been the ghostly vision the young man before the wave sucked him out of the boat and carried off his body to join his forebears in Cillstifiann.
