1. St. Molaise was born in Ireland and raised in Scotland

2. His feast day is 18th of April

3. The statue is made of oak wood

4. It was Cromwell’s men that cut off both hands

5. They couldn’t destroy the statue because it is holy

6. A protestant reformer tried to burn the statue

7. They tried to throw it to sea but it got washed back to shore

8. The original is in a museum in Dublin

9. He died in 639 A.D.

10. He lived the life of a hermit on holy isle

 

The following information is from the National Musuem website 

The Story Behind the Object

This is an oak statue of St Molaise. The back of the statue is hollowed out. It dates from the 13th to 14th century. The maker of the statue is unknown.   St Molaise was an Irish bishop who founded a monastery on the island of Inishmurray, Co Sligo in the 6th century. He died in 638 AD. Molaise is the patron saint of the island. His feast day is celebrated on the 12th of August. The statue was found in ‘Teach Molaise’, a large piece of masonry known as ‘St Molaise’s Bed’ on Inishmurray.   The statue was donated to the Museum in 1949 for safe keeping when the last of the islanders left Inishmurray to live on the mainland in 1948. Inishmurray lies five miles off the northwest coast of Sligo. It is no longer populated.