Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/244

 2 34 The Black Pig of Kiltrusian

finding the Province of Ulster uncomfortable, he made off ; but he was finally overtaken in Co. Sligo in the Valley of the Black Pig, near the townland now known as Mucduff. Here the beast turned at bay, but he was eventually slain and buried on the spot. His pursuers standing round and viewing the proportions of the dead boar with amaze- ment, one of them incautiously stroked the skin the wrong way. One of the bristles pierced his hand, and being venomous, he fell down writhing in agony. He besought his companions to bring him a drink from a fount near by. None of them, however, could carry the magical water, which trickled through their fingers as they tried to convey it to the wounded man, and he died in agony. This is evidently a variant of the well-known story of the death of Diarmuid in the hunting of the Boar of Ben Gulban, where Finn refused the water that would have restored him to life. The boar was in this case also a human being transformed into a beast, and its life and that of Diarmuid were magically united so that the death of the one meant the death of the other. In one version Diarmuid's foot is pierced by a spine as he paces the skin of the slain boar backwards to measure its length. The same tradition prevails in the Scottish Highlands.^ Though the traditions of Fionn Mac Cumhall (Finn MacCool) are more alive in the South of Ireland than in the North, it is remarkable that Ben Gulban (now Benbulbin), where the boar was slain, is also in Co. Sligo. It may therefore be a direct version of the original Black Pig story. A woman told the relater of the Sligo incident that a grave in Ulster similar in size and shape was also called MucdufT and the Grave of the Black Pig. It is not on the Ordnance Survey Map, but there are Upper and Lower Mucduff townlands in Co. Wicklow. In Sligo there are three townlands

' The story of The Pursuit oj Diariniiid and Graiiine was published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, 2 vols, 1881. Compare the tale of the Death of Adonis.