Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/401

 Collcctajiea. 375

and the chief in reply wishes it full of O'Hiomhairs.^^ A very modern and ill-attested story, which I did not find at Dysert in 1885 or 1895, says that O'Dea lured the English into a bog by setting bulrushes in the mire, so that De Clare, " knowing that such plants always grew in firm soil," rode in with his knights and became a prey to the Irish.

The tale of a great battle at Dysert Castle, and the human bones turned up round it, probably concern the battle fought there in 1562, but have been used by some to locale the decisive battle of May, 131S. The "stone of broken bones" near Quin (where a Domnall O'Brien was taken by his enemies and his bones broken on the rock),^^ has been also asserted to refer to Domnall O'Brien, brother of King Torlough, who was slain by a Norman soldier, or mason, when peaceably buying wine at the Castle. I cannot trace the tale before 1860-70, when the history of the Four Masters was well known, and, if the tale be genuine or even taken from some " knowledgeable person," it more probably relates to Domnall beg O'Brien, whose bones were broken with the back of an axe and he, still alive, hung in ropes to the belfry of Quin Abbey in 1584, by order of Sir John Perrot.

A very remarkable story, certainly genuine and evidently refer- ring to the period of the Norman wars, attaches to a low hill with traces of entrenchment and, formerly, a deep straight ditch, between Loughs Bridget (Breeda) and Anilloon (Alinoon) between Tulla and Bodyke. It is called Kilconnell, and in 1839 Irish- speakers called it Cladh na 'n gall ("Foreigners' trench," or " defeat," said some). An English army encamped there and was destroyed by an Irish army from Tomgraney. Most of the English soldiers were slain and buried on the hill top, within the Cladh, where human bones have been found. ^^ In 1S91 the late Captain Charles George O'Callaghan, of Ballinahinch near Kil- connell (from whom I carefully concealed the 1839 tale and the history, although he said "tell me the story I'm to look for"!)

'^ Ordnance Survey Letters (Co. Clare), vol. i., p. 157.

^* So Prof. Brian O'Looney. The tale is also alluded to in Kr^^ue Celtiijue, vol. xiii. (1892), p. 67.

'•"' Ordnance Suii'ey Letters (Co. Clare), vol. ii., p. 297.