Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/222

 1 86 Collectanea.

banshees (see below). Knockaunamoughilly is named from a "Boughil," and other "sham men" appear at the Farbreagas in Cloontra and Cloongaheen. Seefin in Kilseily is another " seat of Finn." Some names are more doubtful. Lough Graney, the river Graney, and Tomgraney, are attributed to a suspicious solar heroine, the lady " Gillagreine " or " Grainne of the bright cheeks."

11. Banshees.

Above the Shannon gorge, overlooking a beautiful mass of mountains, the southern arm of Lough Derg, and the river and Killaloe with its weirs, rises the great brov/n and purple bluff of Craglea. Above the low earthworks and mound of stones that mark the ninth-century fort of Prince Lachtna ascends a rough lane. Further up on the east flank a little well, Tobereevul, gushes out from under a low rock amid the ferns,^^ and on the west side, — up a lonely valley, a long-forgotten battlefield, "Crag Liath where shields were cleft," in one of Brian Boru's earlier combats with the Norsemen, — rises a high crag called Craganeevul. The names of both well and crag commemorate the tutelary spirit of the House of Cass, Aibhill or, more correctly, Aibhinn, " the lovely one," once, it may be, the goddess of the House.

On Good Friday, a.d. 1014, Brian, the aged monarch of all Erin, knelt in his tent praying for victory, while the battle raged over the low ridge now crowded by the houses of northern Dublin and on to the weirs of Clontarf News came that his brave son's standard had fallen, and his page entreated him to ride back to the camp. " Oh, God ! thou boy," cried Brian, " retreat becomes us not, and I myself know that I shall not depart alive, for Aibhill of Crag Liath came to me last night, and she told me that I should be killed today." ^'^ How many centuries of faith lay behind the king's fatalism, who can say? As the Gauls worshipped another banshee, Catabodva,

i^It still exists, though marked only "site of" in the new Ordnance Survey maps. 20 Wars of the Gaedhilwith the Gaill (Ed. Dr. Todd, Rolls Series),