Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/213

Rh was only remembered by one old man of Cromwellian descent at Dun Innees (or Dun Aengusa), for others found the name in various forms, evidently archaic, and not merely derived from O'Flaherty's works (1687), in the period of O'Donovan's Letters as Dun Unguish, or Dun Ungust, and Dun Eanees. Dun-Croohoor, -Conor, or, as O'Flaherty writes: "Conquovar," was attributed to Conchobhair na Siudaine (O'Brien, King of Thomond), who was slain 1267; the old name, as we saw, was Conchiurn. The theory that the Clann Umoir were "gods of darkness," routed by the "solar gods" of Tara, is unconvincing in the abuse of solar theories in the last century.

We have seen that Rev. Caesar Otway placed Domnall Duailbuidhe among the Tuatha De, not (as the Tain bo Flidhais shows) among the mortals of the Gamanraighe. He calls Dun Domhnall (which in the Annals, under 1386, is Dún Domhnainn, connected with another human family, the Fir Domnann of Iorris, or Erris) "a doon of the Tuatha De Dannann," but (as we saw) he was most uncritical. It is, however, certain that at a rather similar fortified knoll in Co. Clare, Croaghateeaun (Cruach an t sidaun, the humped Hill of the fairies or "fairy blast"), we were told to cross ourselves on entering the fort "because of the Dannanns" so perhaps Otway after all had other reasons for the statement than his mere theory.

Chief among the gods remembered in north-west Connacht is Mananánn macLir, the sea god. Roderic O'Flaherty identified him with Orbsen, from whom Loch Oirbsen, or Loch Corrib, the great lake behind Galway city, is named. Larminie gives a tale from one P. M'Grale, in Achill, where much is told of Mananánn, King of Erin, as "a king of druidism and enchantments and devils-craft" and "the best man of druidism to be found." Kaytuch, son of King Keeluch, and Londu, son of the King of Loch Gur (a well-known fairy lake in Co. Limerick