Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/403

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At Quin it is said to have l)een built by the Gobban saor, the famous legendary Master Builder, to whom so many Round Towers, churcheSjCastles.andabbeysof the ninth to the fifteenth centuries are attributed. He twisted the spiral pillars in its beautiful cloister with his own hands. One of the builders fell from the roof and was killed, where an ancient tombstone, with an axe incised on it, marks the place of his burial. Several traditions are told about Sioda, near Kilkishen. He was said to have caught a water horse, and, after being ridden for many years, it ran away with him one day, dinting a rock with its hoofs as it sprang, with the chieftain on its back, into CuUaunyheeda Lake, thence called after his name "Heeda."^'^ Another tale says that Sioda was not drowned, but sleeps beneath the waters, not to waken until summoned to the final battle for the independence of Ireland.

The peel towers rising so numerously in the country mostly date from about 1430 to 1480. Tradition attributes Rossroe Castle to Sioda MacNamara, who built Quin Abbey in 1402. Danganbrack and Ballymarkahan are also rightly assigned to the MacNamaras, after Quin Abbey was erected, as I was told about Ballymarkahan in 1906. Near Clonlara seven brothers built "seven" castles "against each other," and were "all" killed by their brothers. I heard the story first in 1868, when a mere child, and think that there was a princess or a beautiful lady in it about whom the brothers quarrelled, but J barely recollect it, and in 1S89 could not recover more than "the seven brothers who killed each other."

Perhaps to this period should be attributed the tale of a certain monk of Ennis " Abbey" trying to cross the Fergus during a flood. The current being too strong, he called to some men to help him over, but they refused, and he cursed Ennis that no man of Ennis should ever be able to do any good for the place. ^'^

The monks of Ennis told in the seventeenth century how Conor " Nasatus " {i.e. Conchobhar na Srona) O'Brien, Prince of Thomond from 1466, was on his death in 1496 seized by devils. Brother Fergal O'Trean, a man of holy life, when he saw them carrying off

^ More probably after the O'Sheedy, a branch of his house. •''•' This story was told as a well-established one at a public meeting at Ennis about 1895.

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