Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/390

 366 Collectanea.

injure the fences at the churches "for the Danes made them"; the people were less afraid to injure the churches themselves, for " the saints are in heaven and will not come back, but who knows where the Danes are ? " " They [nit the forts to mark their estates, and maybe they'll come back to claim them." "They killed all the clergy in the churches and the (round) tower, and burned them (the churches) all." The Danes were reputed to have tails, as I heard widely about 1870. The stone fort of Caherscrebeen, near Lemaneagh Castle, Inchiquin, had amongst its treasure caves and cells one " full of Danes' beer, beor lochlafinach, the best of all drinks." The old divisions on the hills were made by the Danes to mark out their heather meadows.

Such appear to be all the impressions that remain, upon the mind of the folk a thousand years later, of the two terrible half- centuries 810-50 and 900-70.

So far I can write with little hesitation, but in the legends of the great deliverer Brian, son of Cennedigh, the collector of folklore is in constant danger of deception. How far any of the legends are really old and independent of books, and how far apparently independent versions were derived from books in the early years of the last century, I cannot pretend to decide. Now the corrup- tion is unquestionable ; the popular press and many excellent little books, besides tourists and others who make enquiries not always judicious and even supply information directly, have in the last ten years overlaid nearly all the folk-tales.

The tale of King Brian best attested as traditional relates to the dam built by him across the outflow of Lough Derg to drown out his enemies living up the river, and to the fort of Ballyboru con- structed by him to defend the end of it. The Halls and Windele found the tale existing over seventy years ago,* and I found it among the peasantry of Counties Clare and Tipperary near the fort, among the fishermen on Lough Derg, and among the old folk and gentry, never varied, from 1889- 1906. Mrs. Hall was told by an old woman in 1843 that Balboruma was King Brian Boru's dining room. Windele about 1839 heard that there were two

■'Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Ireland, vol. iii., p. 420. J. ^Vindele, Topo- graphical J/s. (Royal Irish Academy, 12. c. 3), pp. 614-27, calls Balboru " the circular rath of Kincora."