Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/222

 1 90 Collectanea.

as the place where St. Patrick first rested.^ Meeniune (Minane or Benen) and Fiech, the two boys who attended him, were with him there, and Fiech remained with him while Meeniune went on and was torn to pieces by the serpents, but the saint restored him to hfe. A path up the bed of a winter torrent is called the Cassan Cruaich (or footway of the Reek). The first station there is called the Mionnan (or " kid," Otway was told that the devils, being of goatish shape, set " a devil's child," or kid, to watch Patrick, whence the name, and that it was the saint and Fiech who ascended, while Meeniune, who had bruised his heel, stayed behind). The " big general of the serpents," spitting out fire, thundered down the rocks; so Patrick tried to ring his bell, when the monster struck it a blow with his tail, breaking it to pieces and tearing out the clapper. The saint wept and cried to the blessed Virgin and, at her name, the bell came back perfect into his hand. Ringing it again he put the great ser- pent to flight, and the monster ran violently down the steep slope into the lake called Lough na peche {loch na peasta) ; this was too small, and the monster soon emptied it by lashing his tail. Patrick then consigned his enemy to a larger lake. Loch Dearg, or Loch na Corragh, to the east of the Reek, where he fastened him to the bottom, though, during thunder-storms, the peist makes it boil like a pot, as has often been seen.- There are several such legends in Ireland ; indeed, some say that few Irish lakes have not an enchanted city, cow or snake in their depths. We hear of the " last Irish snake " being imprisoned in a lake in the Galtees on the south border of Co. Limerick till the Monday after the general Resurrection. It rises to the surface on every Monday to ask if the day has come and the saint replies " It is not Monday yet," the snake says wearily " It's a long Monday, oh Patrick," and sinks. I heard as a boy similar tales about Lough Gur in Co. Limerick, about 1872, at Attyflin. Similar tales are told of Doolough in Co. Clare, of Killarney and at Murrisk at the foot of Reek to this day.

Another story of the Reek is told at Kilgeever, seven miles away. The saint at the head of a procession of religious persons " remembered that he had forgotten his prayer book on the

^ Otway, Tour 1 1! Counatt^^ht, p. 311. "Ibid. pp. 313-315.