Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/114

 98 Collcclaiica.

Croaghateeaun, north-west of Ballinalacken Casile, to cross our- selves as a protection "against the Dananns," and not far away to the east, near Lisdoonvarna Castle, is the entrenched natural green hillock of Lissateeaun (Lios an t siodhain), the "fairy fort," which was in 1839 a recognised palace of the De Danann. This name recalls the early passages relating to the Sidh. The fifth- century hymn of Fiacc says, — " On Erin's folk lay darkness, the tribes worshipped the Sidh." while Tirechan's annotations in the Book of Armagh'^^ tell of the " viros side aut deorum terrenorum," for whom Patrick and his clerics were mistaken. Much later Seaan MacCraith ^^ tells how, in 1317, the hideous liag Bronach revealed herself at Lough Rask to Prince Dermot O'Brien as one of the Tuatha De Danann, and again, as a lodger in the green fairy hills, in the following year, to Sir Richard de Clare at the ford of the river Fergus. She is still vaguely remembered in northern Burren.^^ In 1684 Roderic OTlaherty tells us that the Irish call "aerial spirits or phantoms" sidhe "because they come out of pleasant hills." Another of the Danann who played a large part in Clare was the smith Lon Mac Liomhtha. Perhaps the banshee Aibhill and the lady Gillagreine were of the same race.^* The latter may have been a daughter of Greine the sun, but in late legend (the "Agallamh") she is a daughter of Finn mac Cum- hail.

2. T/ie Red Brauch Heroes.

The great Setanta, surnamed Cuchulainn, (the Hound of Uladh and for a long time its sole defender against the hosts of Queen Medbh, whether a real hero or the Brocken spectre of one, a sun god, or the son of the god Lugh), has set his mark in place-names

i^See Rolls series, Triparlite Life of St. Patrick, vol. ii., p. 315, for Tirechan, and p. 409 for Fiacc. Tirechan died a.d. 656.

'^'^ Cathreiiii Thoirdhealhhaigh, written about 1345-60, not, as- usually stated, 1459, an error arising from a date in the original of an eighteenth-centuiy copj".

"Cf. vol. xxi., pp. 1S7-9 Her name in 1S39 was Caikach Ciiiii h'oinie(\.ht " Hag of Black Head "'). The old name of the Hag's Head in Molier Cliffs, not far south from Black Head, was Cea;in Cailighe (Kan Kallye in the 1580 maps). The Calliagh (cloaked woman) in older legend was younger, i.e. a Ciiillin.

"Vol. xxi., p. 186.