Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/398

 372 Collectanea.

Donaldmore has taken Conor's place as the slayer, because he is now known to be the actual founder.^"

Torloughmore is remembered as the " founder " {i.e. restorer) of Ennis Abbey. Strange to say, a few generations after his death an unflattering tale is told of this special favourite of Clare historians in the Appendix to a Life of St. Senan. Theodoric, son of Tatheus, enraged by the monks of Iniscathaigh permitting a husbandman to take sanctuary, invaded St. Senan's iermon at cm mic an dubhain (Kilmacduan), and dragged forth the refugee. On the second night after the sacrilege, the saint appeared to the prior of Iniscathaigh, and said that lie was going to punish Theodoric. The Prince saw that same night in a vision St. Senan, who rebuked him and struck his leg with the crozier. No doctor could 'cure the wound, which mortified, and Theodoric died.-^ No definite folk-tale seems to refer to "Torlough's war."-- The second war is, however, well represented.

Claraghmore. — It is wonderful how deep has been the impression made in tradition by the war of Murchad, Prince of Thomond, (Torlough's son) with Sir Richard de Clare in 1310-18. But it is confused and is centred on the Norman leader, locally known as "Claraghmore" (the great De Clare), bearing no trace until recent years of deriving anything from the records. The second prose epic of Thomond, the Cathreim Thotrdhealbhaigh.{"l^x'mm'p\\s of Torlough "), a bombastic but very reliable history (usually assigned to 1459 on the sole authority of a late eighteenth-century copy, but from internal evidence earlier than 1360),"-^ has made no impression on the folk-tales down at least to 1891. A very vague memory of a battle near Clare Abbey is believed to refer to the fierce fight there in 1276, but the tradition gives no data. An

-"[The tale of the slaying of a great architect by his jealous employer is found throughout the Old World ; see, for examples, the Roumanian ballad of Manoli, and note by W. A. Clouston in A''. 6^ (}., 7th S. vol. iv. (1S87), p. 141. — Ed.]

-^ J. Colgan, Acta Sanctortan etc. (1645), Torn i., March 8lh, sec. xiv,

22 Unless a vague fight " where the English were beaten " near Ballycarr be Torlough's victory in Tradree.

-'^Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxii., Sec. C, Pt. ii., pp. 139-40.