Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/228

 2o6 Collectanea.

founder of the building, and is held to explain the rude and inferior work of parts of it. Quin "Abbey" was built by the famous Master Mason Gobban Saor, who twisted the spiral pillars of its beautiful cloister with his own hands. The builder of the south transept (1433) fell from its gable, and was killed where a tombstone with the scribed figure of an axe marks his grave. The north-west corner of Carran church overhangs, and is destined to fall on the wisest man that shall pass below it.

Castles. — A belief similar to that about Carran church was attached to Ballymulcassel or Mountcashel castle. It is a peel tower, built by King Conor na Srona, about 1460, on a steep little knoll of rock beside the road from Sixmilebridge to Kilkishen. It was to fall on the handsomest person, and gossip told of a very ugly man who always took a longer road to avoid passing it. The same legend and gossip was attached to Newcastle peel tower,, near Limerick and not far from the border of Clare. A wizard who lived in Shalee castle was so pestered by his wife that he flew away with half the tower, which remains as Glen castle near Ennistymon station. A guest praised Dysert castle to its owner, O'Dea, and wished that it were full of gold. " I'd rather have it full of O'Hiumhairs," replied O'Dea," the family so complimented being a small but warlike clan, of which one member fought in the wars of 131 3-8 and is reported to have slain Richard de Clare at Dysert in 13 18. I heard in 1869 that the castles near Doonass were built by seven brothers, and that six came to an untimely end at the hands of the seventh, but the legend seems now forgotten at Clonlara.

Rotmd Towers. — The peasants seem never to have adopted the various druidic, Cuthite, phallic, and other theories of 1770 onwards from the so-called " educated classes." To them, as to our earlier writers, the towers are steeples built by saints. John Lloyd, in 1780,^ calls that of Scattery "the loftiest old Steeple in the Kingdom." Michael O'Brannan, in 1794,^ tells how St.

'^ Ordnance Sm-ixy Letters (Co. Clare), vol. i., p. 157. The tale closely resembles a legend of St. Caimin of Iniscaltra and Guaire Aidhne at Iniscaltra, Lough Derg.

^ A Short Tour etc., p. 21.

''Poem on Shannon, Ordnance Survey Letters (Co. Clare), vol. ii., pp. 15-8.