Itha had a brother, S. Finan, and she was related to S. Senan of Achadh-coel.
Itha in her old age was attacked by perhaps the most terrible and painful disease to which poor suffering mortality is subject, and it is one to which women fall victims more often than men. She was attacked in her breast, but endured her pains night and day with the utmost patience and trust in God’s mercy. Her nuns were affected to tears at her sufferings, but she had always a smile and cheerful words on her lips to banish their discouragement.
She died at length on January 15th, in the year 569 or 570, and was laid in her church of Cluain Credhuil, which has since borne the name of Killeedy or the Church of Ida.
She must have been known beyond the island of Ireland, for in the Salisbury Martyrology she is entered in strange form as “In Ireland the festival of S. Dorothea, also called Sith (S. Ith)” on January 15th.
In Cornwall a lofty and bare hill, that commands the Atlantic and the coast, is crowned by a great ruined camp. It had belonged to the British, but was wrested from them and became a stronghold of the Saxons, who held it so as to dominate the entire neighbourhood. This is Hellborough, not far from Camelford. It continued to be a royal castle, the property of the Crown, though it does not seem that any mediæval castle was built upon it. Now, curiously enough, in the midst of this great camp is a mound of stone or cairn, and on this cairn is a little chapel, at present in ruins, dedicated to the saint whose life has just been given. And on the river Camel, that flows into the Padstow estuary, is a parish that bears the name, though corrupted into S. Issey. But near Exeter is a parish church that has her as patroness with the name unmutilated, as S. Ide.
How came these dedications in Cornwall and Devon? Either because S. Brendan on his way home from Brittany founded the churches in memory of his dear foster-mother, or else because here were colonies of holy women from the mother-house in Limerick.
In or about 656 Cuimin of Connor wrote the “Characteristics of the Irish Saints” in metre, and this is what he says of Itha:—
“My (dear) Itha, much beloved of fosterage,
Firmly rooted in humility, but never base,
Laid not her cheek to the ground,