Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/212

 1 80 Collectanea.

A Study in the Legends of the Connacht Coast, Ireland.

The Gods and the Earliest Heroes. The following notes continue the collection published in these pages in 1916 : ^

Of the same cycle of legends — that of the Red Branch Heroes — is the legend of the sons of Umor. The tribe seems actually (from the collections of Duald MacFirbis) to have been a large and important one, settled at more than one point of the coasts of Erris. The legend, however, reaches us in a Munster version, by MacLiac, bard to King Brian Boruma, who wrote about A.D. 1000, and suggests a change of locality from the older form. Being well known, I will give it very briefly. A small fugitive tribe of the Firbolg came from the Scottish Islands to Leinster and, under the security of certain of the Red Branch heroes, notably Cuchullin and Conall Cearnach, were settled at nine raths (earth forts) in the Boyne valley under an exhor- bitant rent. They fled to the court of Queen Medbh, who gave them settlements on the skirts of her province — Mod at the Islands of Mod in Clew Bay (Moidhlinn, in the Tain bo Flidhais), Aigle, of Cruach Aigle or Croaghpatrick near the last ; • Oengus, at Dun Oengusa, in Aran ; Conchiurn, at the same islands, in Inis Medhoin (Inismaan) ; Daelach, on the Dael ; Mil, at Murbech ; Ennach, at Tech n Ennach ; Taman, at Rind Tamain (or Tawin Point), at the end of Galway Bay, and others (as I have already noted) in Co. Clare.- Now in view of the location of the Clann Umoir and Resent Umoir in the prose records, I incline to believe that the places in most instances lay in North Mayo, not round Galway Bay. Taman may represent a settlement at Tawinloch, Clare Island (Cliara) ; Dael, the Dael River at Crosmolina and Murbech, Tra Murbhaig strand, near Killala. The Munster legend prevailed and the names survived in Aran, where we have only O'Donovan's statement, based on a single visit, that the name of Oengus

1 Vol. xxvii. pp. 99, 225.

^2" Rennes Dind Senchas," /ievue Celtique., vol. xv. p. 478; Journal Roy. Soc. Antt. Jr. vol. xliii. p. 50".