Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/530

 492 Collectanea.

of a cornucopia, flowers, and bales (Plate VII),'* long preserved by the Morony family as a relic of the Armada, is considered by Count Lorenzo Salazar, the Italian consul in Dublin, as very probably of the proper period and comparable to other Spanish work.^

In 1887 I was told of another Spanish wreck near Mutton Island, and "its guns" were shown faintly blue through the clear water in a rock pool. The wreck was, however, that of a "coast- guard vessel" in or soon after the Napoleonic wars, which had attracted to itself the older tale. There were faint traditions of the wreck of the Big Ships from Dunbeg to Killard in 1894, and of the ghosts of the crews at Kilkee.

A remarkable ancient table at Dromoland, figured by Count Salazar,^ was according to tradition given to the then O'Brien of Lemaneagh by his brother-in-law, Bosthius Ciancy. It is certainly Spanish, and the tradition may probably be tru€. I heard no tale in Moyarta of the Big Ship really lost there, but found similar tales along the Kerry coast beyond, as I did in Mayo and on the Ulster coast. In 1878 the Calendar of State Papers was un- known, and no local history told the true story, so that the mention of " Boeoshius O'Clanshy " seems like genuine tradition. No wreck is recorded at Doolin, but, when the Zuniga took shelter in Liscannor Bay, not far to the south, wreckage and an oil jar floated in," so a wreck is not impossible. A ship -was wrecked opposite Tromra Castle in the Sound, near Mutton Island, and another at Dunbeg; a third was set on fire by its crew and allowed to drift on shore in Moyarta Parish on the Shannon. The letters of Bcethius MacClanchy, the sheriff of Clare, and others give very full details.

A second tale, evidently old but less authentic, is told of Dun- licka and Carrigaholt Castles in nearly identical forms. The older is given by the Rev. John Graham of Kilrush in 1816.^ Teig MacMahon of Carrigaholt being implicated in the Desmond rising and absent in Kerry, his followers committed outrages on

^ Supra, p. 368.

'•' The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. xli., p. 65.

^ Ibid., vol. XXX., p. 93.

" Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ire/and (i^88-g2), pp. 29-30, 38.

'W. S. Mason, A Statistical Account etc., vol. ii., pp. 443 et seq.