Sir, - Your contributor Flann O Riain refers (April 20th) to Termonmaguirk in Co Tyrone (not Co Armagh, as he says by inadvertence), and mentions a bell attributed to St Columba (Colum Cille) long associated with the parish and latterly preserved in the National Museum of Scotland. I am happy to be able to inform Mr O Riain and your readers that the bell (with nine other Irish bells) has been deposited on loan in the Ulster Museum since 1993 through the courtesy of colleagues in Edinburgh. All 10 bells are currently exhibited.
Mr O Riain refers also to reilig na mban, "the cemetery of the women", in the same parish and asks whether there was another exclusively for men. There was, at least (it seems) for those who died violently, in the shape of reilig na bhfear gonta. On this subject see A. Hamlin and C. Foley in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology 46 (1983), 41-6. - Yours, etc.,
Cormac Bourke
Curator of Medieval Antiquties, Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Belfast 9.