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Name
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The Keeill Sacrilege Stories
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Description
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The communities remembered what happened to anyone who interfered with the keeills. A windmill built from keeill stones went with tremendous fury and had to be taken down. A farmhouse roofed with stone from a keeill produced such unearthly noises that the stone was returned to the site. Bishop Wilson knew the formula for the worst curse a Manx person could utter: Clogh ny killagh ayns corneil dty hie mooar, may a stone of the church be found in the corner of thy dwelling-house. The stories protected what the buildings could not. The holiness was understood to be permanent, deposited in the ground, infused into the stones. A ruined keeill was not a dead church. It was a sleeping one.
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Type
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Legend
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Sacred Site
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Source
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Moore, Folk-lore (1891), Ch. VII
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Cubbon (1952)
