Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/266

 230 Reviews.

from the three worst pests that would come in his time. Con- ganchness, brother of Curoi (slain by Cuchullin, as is told in another story), comes to avenge the latter, " he devastated Ulster greatly; spears or swords hurt him not, but sprang from him as from horn." In his extremity Conchobor calls upon Celtchar. The latter offers his daughter to Conganchness, and she beguiles the latter into revealing how alone he may be slain. Thus was the first pest overcome. The second was the Dun Mouse, found by the widow's son in the hollow of an oak, and reared by the widow till big ; then it turned upon the widow, slew her sheep and kine, herself and her son, and, thereafter, every night would devastate a liss in Ulster. Celtchar boils a log of alder in honey and fat until it was soft and tough ; armed therewith he seeks the Dun Mouse's lair, and when the monster fixes its teeth in the tough wood, Celtchar passes his hand through the log and takes out its heart through its jaws. A year after three whelps are found in the cairn in which Conganchness was buried ; ^ one was given to Mac Datho, and figures in the story of Mac Datho's Boar : one, Ailbe, was given to Culand the Smith ; and one, Doelchu, was retained by Celtchar. But one day it was let out, and every night it would destroy a living creature in Ulster. Conchobor calls upon Celtchar to destroy this third pest. The latter obeys, slays it with his famous venomous spear, the luin^ but in raising the spear a drop of the hound's blood runs along down, goes through him, and he dies.

Now here we have three or four well-known folk-tale themes set in the framework of the Ulster heroic cycle. At what time did this take place ? The story must, be it noted, be pre- twelfth century, as it is contained in the Book of Leinster. Can we trace it farther back? One of the three whelps of the Dun Mouse, Ailbe, was, we have seen, given to Culand the Smith. Now, Culand's hound is well known from the tale of Cuchullin's Boyish Exploits, embedded in the oldest version of the Tdifi bo Cualgne, in which it is killed by that hero

iThe implication, I have no doubt, although it is not expressed in the story, is that the Dun Mouse is in reality an avatar of Conganchness, come back in this form to avenge his slaying by treachery.