Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/478

 444 Collectanea.

At Doonah, near Ballycroy, we hear of a fight in the court- yard, and how Grainne killed the MacMahons and kept the tower ; others said she had built the castle.

O'Donovan i supposed her to be " the Lady of the Reeks," i.e. Munchin (who gave her name to the river between Bangor Erris and Dundonnell), the faithless wife of Domnall Duail- buidhe; but the latter is clearly Flidhais, co-heroine (with her cow) of the " Tain bo Flidhais " ^ at the beginning of our era, and one of his far too frequent guesses in the hasty and (it must be remembered) unrevised Ordnance Survey "Letters."

Formerly the people of Burrishoole showed her burial place in their " abbey," and from the neighbourhood of Rockfleet Castle, her known residence, I incline to accept their assertion. They show the hole in Rockfleet Castle through which the cable of her favourite galley used to be drawn.

In Irish literature. Maxwell's novel, The Dark Lady of Doonah, has secured the claim of that tower to be her special home. The tall corner alone remains on the desolate creeks on Blacksod Bay, one of the few landmarks of the featureless roads from Mulranny to Bangor ; most of the tower fell early in the last century by the accidental burning of a turf (peat) stack in its undervault. Rockfleet and Cliara and another reputed castle (certainly held by the Ui Mhaille and dating about 1470) on Achill Sound, keep her memory green as the terrible sea-queen, the friend and rival of the royal " Red Hag " (Ehzabeth) — " Terra marique potens."

Doubt fill and Later Legends.

Unlike Counties Clare, Kerry and Antrim, the Armada legends (so far as I can learn) hardly exist along the Connacht shore.* At most a feeble legend remains without details ; about the layer of human bones under the sand and coarse vegetation on Sligo Bay, where, as history tells us, the most fearful de- struction of the persecuted fleet took place. The shore was heaped with 1300 bodies, stripped by the excited natives and

' Ord. Survey Letters, Co. Mayo, vol. i. "Supra, vol. xxvii. p. loi.

-'The Co. Clare legends are given sufra, vol. xxiv. pp. 490-493.