Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/475

 Collectanea. 44 1

we can see that much truth can survive in a primitive society from three centuries earlier.^

In 1838 an old man, Henelly, of Ballintubber, gave the fol- lowing account.2 Grania Uaile " na gcearbhach " got her name because she kept a troop of professional dicers and gamblers among her servants. She married John Burke of Glen Ilan and had a son, Tibbot na long. She was a pirate and a wan- derer, and on the day of Tibbot's birth her ship was attacked by Turks. Her crew lost heart and sent to her for help ; she cursed them, rose from her sick bed, tied a blanket round her, and sprang on deck jumping and dancing with a " blunder- bush " in each hand. The Turks stopped to look at her and she fired into a knot of their officers, shot them all, boarded and took their ship, and hanged their survivors at Carrigahowley — so her son got his nickname from the place of his birth. She besieged O'Loughlin of Burren, Co. Clare, and was nearly hit by a cannon ball before she put him to flight, it cut up the ground under her feet as she leaped up and cursed the gunner. She reduced most of Connacht by the aid of the Bourkes and died a natural death after all.

There is another long, uninteresting legend of her attempt to take tribute from the MacAwleys, or the Stauntons ; of her capture of Kinturk, and her repulse from Luppertaun Castle. A mass of equally dull legends of Tibbot na Long were told, and at Doonah she was said to have married six husbands. Dunanierin (Dookeeghan) Castle on Broadhaven is said to have been built by and called after her husband Ricard an larainn.^

About the same time Caesar Otway ^ gathered another legend in Murrisk. Grania was daughter of " Breamhaun Crone O'Malley," chief of " the Uisles of O'Mealy." He died leaving her along with her infant brother, so the tribe elected her as their chief. She built " the Hen's Castle " or " Cashlaun na

^ Ordnance Survey Letters, Mayo, loc. cit.

2 It must be remembered that the Calendars of State Papers were not pub- lished for many years later, and probably are unknown in West Clare and N.W. Connacht to this day.

3 Ord. Survey Letters, Mayo, vol. i.

^ Tour in Connaiight, (1889), pp. 229-245.