Teer to
Faha.

Teampaillín Bréanainn

St Brendan’s Oratory is a small drystone rectangle, less than four metres long and roughly a metre wide inside. Its low walls lie within a hollow, with a cross-inscribed stone at the western doorway. The archaeological survey also describes an iron cross on a cairn at the east end, reportedly made from spars of a German aircraft that crashed nearby during the Second World War.

An account published in 1895 reported carved stones found while temporary altars were being built in 1868. Their comparison with Romanesque work at Kilmalkedar suggests questions about an earlier building, but the stones were no longer available to the later survey.

Tobar Bhréanainn

St Brendan’s Well lies a short distance to the north-west, a simple rectangular hollow holding water. Earlier accounts associate it with Leac an Droma, a pillar once on the cliff edge. People believed that leaning against the stone relieved back pain and rheumatism: a healing tradition attached to the place.

The rounds recorded in 1960

Writing in 1960, C. Ó Danachair described a summit pilgrimage on 29 June. Pilgrims made nine rounds of the well and ruins while saying the rosary, drank the water and took bottles home to people unable to climb. Pins and coins were left as offerings.

The collected folklore gave Brendan a living presence on the summit. One story had pilgrims passing his forgotten missal hand to hand up the mountain; another told of bells heard on the top. These stories record how the mountain was imagined by the communities below it.