20Cunningham 18.
The author explains that the name of this ruined church comes from a legend first recorded by a local schoolteacher in the mid-nineteenth century. The story is that a priest found a dying Spaniard near Sliabh Liag, and as he performed the last rites the Spaniard gave him a purse of gold coins and asked him to build a church with it. Cunningham states that this legend may be but a cover story for how the local community—where smuggling of Spanish wine and tobacco was lucrative—was able to afford its own church.