Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/319

 Collectanea. - 309

deities by turning them into human ancestors.^ Later on some, who had not attained this respectable position, were turned into demons (in the modern sense), but the " unscholarly " peasants kept them as fairies {sid, siabra, Fir sid, etc.), the men of the sid or " fairy mounds." The older sid was an anthropoid god, as large or greater than a man, gradually he became a little elf. With great Brito-Gaulish gods, like Lug, Nuada, Segomo, Catabodua, etc., were non-Celtic gods, like Aengus and Bodbh Dearg, and the Irish Neptune, Manannan mac Lir, who " keeps his human size," and is still " alive and venerated " on the coasts of Mayo and Galway. I therefore prefer in this section to use "fairy" in .its modern connotation, regarding sid as being better translated as " god," and not (as so common with scholars of Irish literature) as " elf," " goblin," or " demon," all most misleading translations.

The Banshee, as a goddess "fallen on evil days" from her high estate, naturally claims precedence, but unfortunately (though I found mention of her frequently) none of the vivid and suggestive tales found in Co. Clare were noted by me along the coasts of Connacht. I accordingly treat of her along with other death omens, as in no case did I find any belief in her protective power, elsewhere her last trace of godhead. I found belief in her at Portacloy and the Mullet at the N.W. angle of Co. Mayo, on the islands of Cliara (Clare Island) and Inishbofin. In the peninsula of the Mullet Mr. J. A. Nolan of BelmuUet and Messrs. F. C. Wallace and P. T. Reilly of Carn told Dr. Charles Browne 2 that the principal death omens were the keening of the Banshee, the death watch, the howling of a dog at night, and the creaking of furniture. Several persons had heard the cry of the Banshee before the death of a relation, but no details were told me ; perhaps I was too much a stranger to be taken into the sanctuary of such solemn recollections. The Banshee

' Of course the oldest pedigrees usually have ancestral ^^ods : thus the Munster princes derive from Nuada and Lug, the O'llealys from Manannan. The O'liriens have the war goddess Macha, under her name Dairine, changed to an ancestor along with Lug, Nuada and (apparently) a nephew (.A the British' war god Segomo or Caniulos Nia Segamain.

''■ Proc. R.l, Academy, vol. v. ser. iii. " I'^ilinngraphy of the Mullet," etc.