Saint Lughaidh, better known by his pet name of Moluag, was an Irish noble of the Dál nAraide[6] (one of the main tribes of the Ulaid in what is now called Ulster).

The name, as it has come down the centuries, Moluag or Moluoc, is made up of the honorific mo, plus the original name Lughaidh, pronounced Lua, plus the endearing suffix –oc.

In a footnote he adds that the five other priests were Columbanus (Cólman), Meldanus (Mellán), Lugadius (Mo Lua), Cassanus (Cassán) and Creanus (Ciarán).

[7] Moluag was a bishop active during the period of the First Order of Celtic Saints and known as 'The Clear and Brilliant, The Sun of Lismore in Alba'.

Tradition states that the rock on which Moluag stood detached itself from the Irish coast and he drifted across to the island of the Lyn of Lorn in Argyll now called the Isle of Lismore, in Loch Linnhe,[11] where, in 562, he founded his community.

Their kings were cremated on the ancient man-made "burial mound" of Cnoc Aingeil (Gaelic for 'Hill of Fire') at Bachuil, about three miles from the north of the island, near the site that Moluag chose for his first centre.

[14] In his life of the Irish Saint Malachy, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote of Moluag, "One of the sons of that sacred family (Bangor) Lua by name, is said himself alone to have been the founder of a hundred monasteries", Michael Barrett clarifying this as a reference to monastic houses in Ireland.

[22] It has been suggested that the concentration of dedications to Moluag in North-East Scotland, and particularly in the vicinity of Rhynie, may be a legacy of a saint cult promoted during the reign of Nechtan mac Der-Ilei and contemporaneous with the ascendancy of the Cenél Loairn, with whom his Pictish kingdom appears to have enjoyed good relations.

[23] At Mortlach in Banffshire, where some of his relics were preserved, an abbey was founded in 1010 by Máel Coluim II of Scotland, in thanks for a victory in which the Scots had invoked the aid of Saint Moluag.