Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/384

 342 Collectanea.

reddened all the lake. As the wounded being floated away she wailed : —

" As the water maid floats weak and bloodless down the stream So the O'Briens shall go from Killone."

Prof. Brian O'Looney heard in his youth, and told me, a tale nearly identical : —

" As the mermaid goes on the sea, A wretched victim devoid of flesh and blood, So shall the race of O'Brien pass away Till they leave Killone in wild weeds."

The lake, like the stream already noted at Caherminaun, turns red at times from iron scum and red clay after a dry summer. This is supposed to be caused by the local Undine's blood, and to foretell a change of occupants in Newhall. Strange to say, I saw it happen last when the place was let by the MacDonnells to the O'Briens. The cellar at Newhall has its outer section roofed with large slabs, and the inner consists of long, low, cross vaults. In the end of the innermost recess is a built-up square patch, which sounds hollow, and is said to show the opening closed to keep out the thievish mermaid. There seems no evidence of any stream running underneath the cellar, but local tradition tells of a vaulted passage down to the lake.

Sruhaunaglora (prattling brook), in Kilseily on the flank of the eastern hills, probably owes its name, as many brooks their legend, to the supposed talking of water-folk. There was some belief in mer-folk at Kilkee ])efore 1879, but it has nowadays got touched-up for tourists. Such touching-up, however, cannot have aff'ected the ugly, drunken, stupid tnerrow Coomara (sea-dog), who kept the souls of drowned sailors in magic lobster-pots in his house under the sea, off Killard, as related by Crofton Croker.^ The merroio's power of passing through the waves depended on a magic cap, and a duplicate of it enabled his human guest to visit him.

The last reported appearance of a mermaid is so recent as the end of April, 19 10. Several people, including Martin Griffin, my informant, saw what they are firmly convinced was a mer-woman in a cove a little to the north of Spanish Point, near Miltown,

5 Op. cit.. Part 11. (1828), pp. 30-58 (" The Soul Cages").