Conor MacNessa

In pre-Patrick Ireland were a few remarkable kings. Cormac MacArt. Niall of the Nine Hostages. Conor MacNessa. 

Reigning over Ulster during the early part of the first century A.D., Conor MacNessa was a patron of warriors, scholars, and poets.  It is Conor about whom there is told this interesting tale. A brain-ball, fired by Cet MacMagach, a champion from Connaught, sunk into Conor’s skull. The occasion of the conflict was a cattle raid.  Conor died of this infliction, but not for seven years. His physician would not remove the brain-ball, saying that to do so would cause death instantly. Instead, he prescribed a moderate lifestyle for Conor, advising him to avoid all excitement. Conor was to live with a calmness that did not characterize kings of that time.

 Conor succeeded at this pacific existence for seven years until one day the sunlight suddenly turned into darkness accompanied by unusually violent lighting and thunder. Conor asked his druids the meaning of these perplexing events and was told that in the East, in one of the many countries under the rule of Rome, a unique man of more noble character and loftiness of mind and beauty of soul than any man who had ever lived --- a God-man who had lifted the lowly, enlightened the ignorant, and brought hope to the hopeless --- a man of unsurpassed love whose touch healed the blind, the deaf and the lame, and who actually raised the dead --- had been crucified between two thieves by the Romans. 

Conor grabbed his sword and cried “Show me the accursed wretches who did this base deed!” and burst forth from his courtiers and into the storm, through a stand of trees, hacking their branches as he did so, and shouting “Thus would I treat the slayers of that noble man, could I but reach them!”  From this passionate exercise, the brain-ball was expelled from Conor’s head and he immediately died.