Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/522

 480 Collectanea.

These beliefs are obviously early, as in the "Agallamh" of The Book of Lismore'^'^ is a lough /m/ which kills men and hounds, and The Book 0/ Beetiagh tells of " Loc na pesti," where a hideous /m/ slew 900 youths as they bathed. The Seanchus M6r has a lake monster, the Murdris, which expands and contracts like a smith's bellows. The same idea takes shape in the reputed gigantic (if not supernatural) eels and pikes in certain lakes. An enormous pike haunts Gurteen Lough, an old property of the Stamers, in Lower Bunratty. The peasants dare not bathe in its waters, and believe they have seen in the dusk a huge misty form in the lough and even crawling up its shores, whence it has frequently carried off lambs, and even calves. ^^

Bulls. — In ruins and hollow trees sometimes a strong breeze from some particular point will cause a deep intermittent bellow, which might originate a belief in ghostly bulls. At Rosslara (Fortanemore) Castle near Tulla we have heard the wind from some undetermined point towards the north-west, when sufficiently strong, raise a roar so mighty as to be audible far from the ruin. I traced the noise to a small deep window nearly filled by a slope of earth and stones. The Castle enjoys the fame of being haunted, but I have heard no bull legend. At Rinroe (or Elmhill) Castle near Clonlara, the bull was seen about 1890 by the then owner of the farm on which the ivied tower stands. Having missed several " trams " of hay, the farmer was lying in wait in some bushes in the Castle field, and at last saw a huge black bull come out of the ruin, and throw its tail round a "tram" of hay and draw it into the castle.^*^ There is an old lane way at a beautiful spot on the shore of Lough Derg opposite to the " Holy Island " of Iniscaltra with its lofty round tower and clustered churches with their noble setting of lake and mountains. In this old road are two dreaded spots, one haunted by a ghostly black bull with fiery eyes, and the other by a less awe-inspiring object " a ghost like a turkey cock " ! Farther north is the scene of a curious variant of the Bishop Hatto legend, with frogs instead of rats and a brutal boy in place of a cruel prelate.^''

^^ Translated by S. H. O'Grady in Silva Gadelua, vol. ii., pp. 101-265.

^^ So the late Ralph Hugh Westropp and Mrs. Stamer,

^^ The late Hugh Massy Westropp heard this from the farmer.

" So Capt. Hibbert.