Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/467

 Collecta7iea. 433

(who said he was a Danish gentleman) come to the fort with an old parchment to look round and mark on the map all the places in the country that belonged to his forefathers and that by right the fort was his.^ I fear many jest-lovers have too often spread such uncomfortable shocks to tenant pur- chasers, often putting hindrance in the way of antiquarian workers. Even recently a tale of a grant by the Kaiser pro- duced a " scare " in a certain district in Munster. At Down- patrick Head (as I have told already) 2 another man from a Danish ship is said to have flown a kite over the isolated fort of Dunbriste and by drawing a rope up secured all the treasure of Geodruisge the Dane.

On Inishturk the legend told of the Dim ^ (a long oval ring- wall of massive blocks over the cup-like little harbour) relates how the Danish pirates were the last persons in Ireland who had the secret of making the Bior Lochlannach, or Danes' Beer, the most delicious of all drinks, from the heather bloom. The foreigners lived in security on the steep knoll (mooring their galleys in the land-locked Portadoon, concealed from the sea), and from their loftier outlook they marked down the passing ship and darted out on it unexpectedly, leaving no one to betray its doom. At last the Irish discovered the fatal lair and surprised the Dun, slaying all, save an old Dane and his son. They offered them quarter if they told how to make the " Beer," or (as I heard more recently) showed them the hiding place of their treasure, the vast accumulation of many years. The older warrior, fearing the boy's constancy might yield to torture, promised to tell if they killed the boy before he knew of his father's treachery. It was done, and the Dane, tearing himself from his unsuspecting guards, fled, hurling back insults on his captors, to the deep and precipitous chasm beyond Portadoon, and, hurling himself over the cliff, carried his secret

^Sketches in Erris and Tyra^oly, p. 189.

"Journal Roy. Soc. Antiqq. Ireland, vol. xlii. p. 106 ; Folk-Lore, vol. xxvii. p. 225.

^ "Clare Island Survey," Proe. K.I. Acad. vol. xxxi. part 2, pp. 47-49. Dr. Browne heard of a more recent treasure find {Proe. R.I. Aead. vol. xxvii. p. 219.