Mo Chua of Balla

Mo Chua or Crónán mac Bécáin, also called Claunus, Cuan, Mochua, Moncan and Moncain (died 30 March 637) was a legendary Irish saint who founded the monastery in Balla.

[1] Mo Chua was the youngest of the three sons of Becan (supposedly descended from Lugaid mac Con) and Cumne (daughter of Conamail of the Dál mBuinne).

[2] After growing to adulthood at Bangor Abbey, Mo Chua was eventually expelled, like many other Irish monks who shared his opinions, for being a "Romanist" who opposed the degree to which the monasteries and clergy of the Celtic Church had been absorbed into the Irish clan system and lost their independence from control by local lay rulers from the Gaelic nobility of Ireland,[3] Mo Chua founded Feara-rois monastery in Monaghan, before traveling in 616, at the age of thirty-five, to Connaught, where he lived as a hermit in a stone cell.

In another story, Mo Chua was guided by a miraculous moving holy well from Bangor to Ross Darbrech, passing on the way through Gael, Fore, Tech Telle, Hy Many, Lough Cime, and Ros Dairbhreach,[4] where it stopped and was at once surrounded by a wall of massive stones, forming the Balla Round Tower.

[6] Mo Chua supposedly once encountered two mighty women named Bee and Lithben, who transported passengers over a dangerous creek in a basket, and converted and baptized both them and their fathers.