How St Patrick converted a king
The crozier and the foot
The tradition holds that St Patrick came to Cashel in the 5th century and baptised Aengus, son of Nadfraoch, King of Munster. During the ceremony Patrick drove his crozier into the ground — and through the king's foot. Aengus said nothing, assuming the stabbing was part of the ritual. Patrick said nothing either, then or afterwards. Neither man ever mentioned it. Whether the silence was tact or embarrassment has been debated for fifteen hundred years.
1101 and the end of a royal seat
Cormac hands over the keys
In 1101, Muirchertach Ua Briain — King of Munster, most powerful ruler in Ireland at the time — donated the Rock of Cashel to the Church at a synod held on the site. The political calculation was subtle: he was a Dál Cais man, not Eóganacht, and the Rock was the Eóganacht's ancestral seat. Giving it to the bishops removed a rival symbol of Munster kingship and made him look pious. It worked on both counts.
What was brewing at the Palace
The Guinness well
Richard Guinness, steward to Archbishop Arthur Price at Cashel Palace in the 1720s, is believed to have brewed ale on the palace grounds using water from its well. His son, Arthur Guinness, was the Archbishop's godson. Arthur went on to sign a 9,000-year lease on a brewery at St James's Gate in Dublin in 1759. The family connection between a Tipperary archiepiscopal household and the most recognisable pint in the world is the sort of story that sounds made up.
Hore Abbey and the Archbishop who changed his mind
The last Cistercians
Archbishop David Mac Cerbaill transferred Hore Abbey from the Benedictines to the Cistercians of Mellifont in 1272, endowed it with lands and mills, and later entered the monastery himself, dying there in 1289. Hore was the last Cistercian monastery founded in Ireland. It sits in a field below the Rock — roofless since the Dissolution, free to enter, and usually empty of everyone except the jackdaws.