are various folk stories about the tower and pillar. One were a faithful lady, awaiting the return of her husband, falls from the tower when an incorrect flag on his returning ship mistakenly signalled his death, echoes the fate of Aegeus the father of Theseus. The lady's finger was then supposedly built by the returned husband in memory of his wife. In 1819 a strange old woman, who had lived abroad for many years, took up residence at the top of the tower. She spent her time at her spinning wheel under a makeshift sail roof set up by local fishermen. She developed a reputation as a local hermit, donating her spinning work to the local church and having refused to give her name became known simply as the 'lady of the tower'. In the severe winter of 1821 she had to abandon the tower and died soon after in a charitable institution in Drogheda. Beside the Maiden Tower is the former RNLI Lifeboat station, in operation between 1872 and 1926. A dwellinghouse until at least the late-1950s, it was subsequently derelict and roofless until 2003 when it was restored as a residence. In 2018 it was put up for sale in conjunction with the surrounding 31 acres of sand dunes on which a deepwater port had been proposed. The boathouse is a Protected Structure (ID No. MH021-123) in the Meath County Development Plan. In 2015 Harvey Keitel filmed part of an insurance commercial at the tower. Fisheries and River Boyne Mornington was traditionally a fishing village on the River Boyne based on salmon fishing and mussel dredging, however the nature of the area and of a fishing livelihood changed significantly at the time of "The Boom". By tradition St. Patrick blessed the fishermen at Inbhear Colpha, were the Colpe stream enters the Boyne in Mornington, as they gave him salmon when he asked for something to eat, in contrast to those on the Ainge, or Nanny Water whom he had cursed for being inhospitable. He said then the Mornington fishermen would always have fish. The fishery was known as the lord's fishery by the early Stuart period and in 1603 King James granted Sir George Carew, vice-Chamberlain of the Queen "the tithes of the fish of Mornanston in the parish of Colpe". Drogheda was given and confirmed in its control of the Boyne and fisheries in 1609 (See above).