Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/254

 2 2 6 Collectanea.

reign of Elizabeth, when Hugh Boy MacConnell, who had held Downapatrick in Tirawley, was attainted for rebellion, and his lands forfeited in 1589 and granted to the English in 1594.^

Dr. James MacParlan in 1802 published his Statistical Survey -of Mayo, but though he describes the remains he gives no legend. It is questionable if he did not entirely depend on the information of the local gentry for his notes of the wilder districts of County Mayo. The collections of Rev. Caesar Otway, T. O'Connor, and John O' Donovan are more satisfactory, dating between 1836-8, though Otway had an earlier source, a book of legends collected by a coastguard officer, Lieut. Henri, stationed at Dookeeghan, on Broadhaven, for some nineteen years. If this volume could be retrieved it would be invaluable, for Henri was a man of intelli- gence, and had not acquired the fatal cleverness of Miss Knight and her brother for touching up details with colours from Scott's novels and a previous work on the district.^

Otway's version ^ is as follows : he embodies it in a conversation •with his friend George Crampton. Dunbrista was once a strong- hold of a " Paganee king," who plundered and ruined the people of the district. Their cry came to the ears of St. Patrick at Ballisadare, in County Sligo, and, taking boat, he came to Tirawly. Landing on the "cursing stone "at Kilcummin, where the French landed in 1798, he came to Downpatrick, and, standing where an altar still remains, he prayed to God to succour those suffering wrong and to abate the cruel tyranny. The king came out of his stronghold, a fortified headland, and hurled his spear at the saint, but it missed and fixed itself in a little mound, one of the stations. The king burst out of his fortress, leading his men to devastate the country, but he had not gone far when,

^ See "Promontory Forts and Early Remains," County Mayo, Journal Koyal Society of Antiquaries, Ireland, vol. xlii. , p. lOI.

2 Wild Sp07'ts of the West, pp. 64-66, is evidently the source for the " skull oath " in Knight's legend of Donnell Doolwee and Munchin.

^ Erris and Tyrawly, pp. 231, 238. Otway seems to tell it here naturally. Sometimes, inspired by "chaffing" some peasant informant or by the two accomplished Knights, he "overworks" his story, but this process is always very apparent where it occurs. Hence my variant estimates of his reliability. Crampton and Henri seem to tell the tales as they heard them.