Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/241

Rh in Leitrim, where the Pig's Dyke ran into the Shannon, an old man said to Mr. De Vismes Kane, apparently à propos of nothing, "If the Great War arose, we should have to cross the Shannon at once, before the bridge at Roosky would be broken down, or we would all be killed." Though these so-called Prophecies of St. Columbkille have "caused the breaking up of many a happy home in Ulster," there is, we need scarcely say, no sign whatever of them in the older poems which go under that title, so far at least as these have as yet been printed. So-called "Prophecies" are attached to the names of most of the Irish Saints, and Columcille comes in for the supposed authorship of the larger number of them. They are, however, late compositions of no merit or interest. When the story of the massacre was concocted later still, it was evidently considered that his name would add solemnity to the horrible idea.

But the tradition of the Black Pig is as ancient as anything we have in these islands, and it is specially connected with the great ditch known as the "Black Pig's Dyke" (Gleann na muice duibhe) or "Race" or "Rut," called also the "Worm Ditch" in some parts, which can be traced in fragments all across the north of Ireland from Bundoran on Donegal Bay, across Fermanagh, Cavan and Monaghan, turning north between Armagh and Down, and which probably formed the ancient southern and eastern boundary of Ulster. At its junction at the S.E. corner, where it turns due north, lay the great fort or rampart of the Dorsey, the main entrance into Ulster, or the "Gates of the North." The main drift of the legend is that of a magical pig that raged westward through Ireland, tearing up this deep furrow with its snout. Along its course we find such names as Moylemuck, "The Bald Hill of the Pig"; Tober-na-Mucky, "Well of the Pig"; Carrick-na-Muic, "The Pig's Rock," a great stone which has two marks made on it by the magical pig, etc. Near Roosky on the borders of Leitrim