Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/133

 Collectanea. 105

The greatest slaughter took place at a hollow called Lug na fullagh, the hollow of blood (I presume the Lugfiadumme of Pococke's book), and the King of Munster fell. Human bones were found in great quantities in the hollow and under the sand- hills. A " semispherical mound" about a mile and a half away was called Reemooni {Righ Mhuimnigh, " King of Munster"), and when it was opened a standing skeleton was found in it. O'Donovan tells how the gale uncovered both the Leacht and a church, cm mbr rnhathas, which was forgotten (and I presume buried again in the sands) in 1838, when he wrote. Others said that the skeleton " sat on a stone chair," and had its face turned to the north-east, towards the Leacht. Another monument, far down the slope towards the sea, was called the Leacht na Caillighe (or Hag's ^ Grave). Its occupant was a powerful enchantress, and wife of a king, whose "three sons and daughter" she transformed into swans. When St. Brendan built his church, Teampull na bhfear, on Inisglora the swans used to sit on the roof bowing their heads at the elevation of the Host. At last the saint heard of them and prayed ; they resumed their human forms, but on the touch of a sinful man fell into dust. The tale is a variant of that of the children of Lir, and legends that the great promontory forts of Dunminulla and Dun Fiachrach, to the north of the sandhills, were their resting places before the introduction of Christianity are told at those places, and the long creek of Sruffoda Conn was said to have been their favourite haunt. Their bodies are said to have been buried on Inisglora, the princess between two of her brothers, the third and youngest (her favourite) lying in her arms. The only other legend of the battle of Cross known to me is that the peasantry drove their cattle for safety within the great stone rampart of the headland fort of Dunnamo (^Duti na mbo), " fort of cattle," named from this occurrence.

The other legends of the Pagan period round Cross are few and slight. Dun Fiachrach,- besides being a resting place of the swan children, belonged to a great chief, Fiacra, who used to leap his " water horse " across the great chasm between the fortified head-

^ Literally "the cloaked woman," not at first old or ugly, then a nun, then an oldwovian, then a hag.

^Journal Royal Society of Antiquaries, Ireland, vol. xlii., p. 197.