Brewer's: Kevin

(St.), like St. Senanus (q.v.), retired to an island where he vowed no woman should ever land. Kathleen loved the saint, and tracked him to his retirement, but the saint hurled her from a rock. Kathleen died, but her ghost rose smiling from the tide, and never left the place while the saint lived. A bed in the rock at Glendalough (Wicklow) is shown as the bed of St. Kevin. Thomas Moore has a poem on this tradition. (Irish Melodies, iv.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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