Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/397

 Collectanea. 371

bered as "Croohoore na Sudany," and is reputed to have built the noble early fortress of Dun Conor or " Doon Croohoore," on the middle Isle of Aran. He may have repaired it, or added a late- seeming bastion to its outer wall, but the place is evidently of very early origin. In a poem by Mac Liac, King Brian's bard, about 1000, the island was assigned to Concraid, son of Umor, a Firbolg chief at the beginning of our era. Probably the names Concraid and Conchobhar were confused in the poi)ular mind,^' and the close connection between Aran and Corcomroe familiarised the Aran men with Conor's monument and history. Hugh Brigdall in 1695 notes "a monument or statue of ye O'Bryens in this Abbey nicknamed Concuba na Siudne."*^ Local tradition in the middle of the nineteenth century said that he fell in battle and was buried where he fell, and the Abbey built over him.^* A cruder story about 1849 said that he fell smoking, and was buried with his pipe in his mouth ! This was still told at the Abbey in 1878, but it is hard to tell how it originated, as the face is clean shaven and unbroken. I found no trace of the pipe story in 1885, but by 1900 it had been revived among young men "guides," falsely so called, for the benefit of tourists.

A tale existed before 1870 which was curiously like the tales of Solomon putting Hiram and the temple-builders to death, the Strasburg clock, and so on. Conor got five skilled masons to build the Abbey of Corcomroe, and as soon as they had finished the chancel and east chapels he killed them, lest they should build similar structures elsewhere \ this explains the rude, bald ugliness of the rest of the ruin and its beautiful east end. In recent years

^"^ Revue Celtiijne, vol. xv., p. 478, from the Rennes Dindsenchas, sec. 78, ed. by VV. Stokes. Roderic O'Flalierty says " Chonquovar" {Ogygia and A Cho'o- graphical Description of \V(st or H-Iar Counaught).

^* Ms. Trinity Coll., Dublin, i. i. 2, pp. 332 (Cominottplcue Book relating to Ireland).

^^ Ordnance Survey Letters (Co. Clare), vol. i., p. 156, collected by John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry. A very inaccurate view of the monument is given in the Dublin Penny Journal, vol. ii. (1834), p. 341, and in Canon Dwyer's Handbook to Lisdoonvarna (1876), p. 81. The account in the former says wrongly that the monument is of " Donchadh" O'Brien, slain in " 1267."' Donchadh also fell in battle and was buried in the Abbey (in 131 7), but the monument is for Conchobhar, whose powerful son reigned for many years later.