Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/129

 Collectanea. loi

Among the episodes leading up to the chief Irish epic, the Tain bo Cuailgtie, is a lesser raid, the Tain bo Flidhais. Dry versions were told in Ulster, and appear in the twelfth century Book of Leinster,^ but the full and interesting form clearly originated in the scene of the legend. It is preserved in the copy of an exemplar dated 1238, now in Scotland. ^ Rarely can we compare so early a version with the folk legends. Very briefly I give the outline. The hero Fergus, son of Roigh, a refugee at the Court of Queen Medbh, about the beginning of our era, hears of the beauty of Flidhais, wife of Oilill Finn, king of the Gamanraighe, an ancient tribe of Erris, and gets aid from his hostess and paramour Medbh to carry off the lady and her cattle. Entertained chivalrously by her husband, who suspects his design, he is then challenged to fight, overpowered and imprisoned at Dun Flidhais or Rath- morgan. Medbh goes to his rescue, fights her way past Ath Fenn (Oilill's residence at Caorthannan at Errew on Lough Conn) and through the hills and besets the fort.' Oilill Finn, despite every warning, is unprepared, and has to wait for his adherents. During the blockade the treacherous Flidhais, who was enamoured of Fergus, helps the latter to escape to the enemy while Oilill was drunk, and the latter in the morning has nothing left but to escape to the coast. His steward, Certan, lies in a ship off the strand named Tragh cuili Turgein, and is called by Oilill, but, having a wrong of his own to avenge, he backs the ship into the haven of Cuan traga cinn certain, and leaves Oilill to perish in a desperate fight. The chief's head is cut off by Fergus and brought to the faithless wife to show that she is free, and then the hero brings her and the spoils eastward over the Munhin. The Gamanraighe, under the father of their slain prince, Domnall duail buidhe,

^ Also in Leabar na huidhre and an Egerton MS. See Irische Texte (Windisch), vol. ii., pp. 206-223.

^Celtic Review, "The Glenmassan Manuscript," Professor Mackinnon, vol. i., p. 214 ; vol. ii., p. 27 ; vol. iii., pp. 127-137 ; vol. iv., pp. 15-25 and 205-219. It also occurs in a later MS. in the Royal Irish Academy, which I understand is being edited by Miss M. Dobbs of Cushendall for Erm.

^The topography is, as usual, minutely accurate, so much so that I have been able to make a detailed map of the legendary xzxA.— Journal Royal Society of Antiqua7-ies, Irelajid, xliv., p. 149.