Kilflynn

Kilflynn is a village and a civil parish in north County Kerry, Ireland. It is 11 km north-east of Tralee just off the N69 road from Tralee to Listowel.

The origin of the place name Cill Flainn is unknown. Two suggestions are commonly circulated. ‘Cill’ in Irish can mean 'cell' or 'churchyard' so in context might mean 'church of Flainn.' A popularised tale is that it was named after a Roman Catholic hermit monk, Flainn, said to have lived by the River Shannow . Crippled and blind, he was visited by the Virgin Mary, who offered to restore his ailing sight. Flainn declined, asking for the miraculous power to be transferred to others via a local well . Some refer to this person as ‘St Flainn,’ but no such person was canonised. There is possible confusion with St Flannan, originally from Killaloe in County Clare.
The alternative suggestion is that the name derives from the 'O’Flannan tribe': in August 1931, in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, a paper referencing a 15th-century manuscript listing rents in Clanmaurice presents both 'O Flannayn' and 'Kyllflanyn' as 'Kilflyn' in the English translation from the original Latin, a significant error which may be the root of the suggestion. The cantred or rural deanery of Othorna & Oflannan was an Anglo-Norman sub-division, in this case generally along the historical boundaries of much older kingdoms and regions which were part of West Munster , in the realm of the Ciarraighe, and which later became County Kerry some time between 1222 and 1229.

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