ST. FINIAN, SURNAMED LOBHAR, OR THE LEPER

WAS son of Conail, descended from Kian, the son of Alild, king of Munster. He was a disciple of St. Brendan, and flourished about the middle of the sixth century. He imitated the patience of Job, under a loathsome and tedious distemper, from which his surname was given him. The famous abbey of Innis-fallen, which stood in an island of that name, in the great and beautiful lake of Lough-Lane in the county of Kerry, was founded by our saint.* A second, called from him Ardfinnan, he built in Tipperary; and a third at Cluainmore Madoc, in Leinster, where he was buried. He died on the 2d of February; but, says Colgan, his festival is kept on the 16th of March at all the above-mentioned places. Sir James Ware speaks of two MS. histories of his life. See also Usher, (Antiq. c. 7.) Colgan, 17 Martii. Mr. Smith, in his natural and civil history of the county of Kerry, in 1755, p. 127.