Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/249

 Rh Slieve Belgadaun occurs also in another story which I heard, called the Bird of Enchantment, in which a fairy desires some one to bring a sword of light "from the King of the Firbolg, at the foot of Slieve Belgadaun." Nephin is a high hill near Crossmolina, in North Mayo.

Page 89. Stongirya, a word not given in dictionaries, means, I think, "a mean fellow." The dove's hole, near the village of Cong, in the west of the county Mayo, is a deep cavity in the ground, and when a stone is thrown down into it you hear it rumbling and crashing from side to side of the rocky wall, as it descends, until the sound becomes too faint to hear. It is the very place to be connected with the marvellous.

Page 95. Might not Spenser have come across some Irish legend of an imitation man made by enchantment, which gave him the idea of Archimago's imitation of Una:

"Who all this time, with charms and hidden artes, Had made a lady of that other spright, And framed of liquid ayre her tender partes, So lively and so like in all men's sight That weaker sence it could have ravished quite," etc.

I never remember meeting this easy deus ex machinâ for bringing about a complication before.

Page 101. Leeam imprecates "the devil from me," thus skilfully turning a curse into a blessing, as the Irish peasantry invariably do, even when in a passion. H'onnam one d'youl—"my soul from the devil" is an ordinary exclamation expressive of irritation or wonderment.

Page 104. When I first heard this story I thought that the name of the hero was, the pronunciation of which in English letters would be Gul-yeesh; but I have since heard the name pronounced more distinctly, and am sure that it is , g'yulleesh, which is a corruption of the name , a not uncommon Christian name amongst the seventeenth century Gaels. I was, however, almost certain that the man (now dead) from whom I first got this