Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/506

 49 8 The Bodleian Dinnshenchas.

ni iuirxx acht soas^ namma. Doluidh iar?/m ind ingen lassin sruth CO tici Lind Mna Fele, [j traghais in topur, ■] rolensi co hum na habann] Tarrc[h]ain. Immasroi iar suidhi, co tarla a tarr [faen] iuirxx, 3 roblaiss bass iar tiachtain in tire centaraig. IS de sin ata Sinann j Lind Mna Fele 3 Tarrchain.

Dolluidh Sinann cuairt cachta dochum top?«> tormalta, ro[s]tib tond cen tuillem te, nir' bo tuilledh comraichne.

Sinann, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan, of the Land of Promise, went to Condla's Well under the sea, a well whereat are the hazels and .... of knowledge, and (nine) hazels of ... . And in the same hour their fruit and their flowers and their leaves burst forth. In the same hour they fall in a single shower on the well, and it raises on it a royal wave of purple bubbles, and the salmon chew that fruit, and it is the juice of the nuts that is put up in the purple bubbles. And seven chief streams spring out of the well, and each stream turns back till it reaches the well, which is deemed by everyone the Well of Knowledge.

Now the maiden went to seek the lore, for nothing was wanting to her save only knowledge. So she went with the stream till she came to Linn Mna Fele (" the Pool of the Modest Woman"), and the well ebbed, and she followed it to the banks of the river Tarr-chain (" Fair Belly"). After this the river overw^helmed her and turned her belly {tarr) supine upon her, and she tasted death after reaching the land of this side.

Hence is " Sinann" and " Linn Mna Fele" and " Tarrchain".

Sinann went a bondmaid's round To a well which was exhausted (?). A wave smote her without a warm. . . It was not an addition of. ..

Also in BB. 381 a 30 ; H. 39a; Lee. 479 a ; and R. 109b. Versified, LT>. 156.1 6.

O'Curry gives a lengthy paraphrase of this story in his Mafincrs and Ciis/oms, ii, 142-144. He says that Connla's Well was " situated, so far as we can gather, in Lower Ormond". He also says that five of the " seven chief streams" were the Boyne, the Suir, the Nore, the Barrow, and the Slaney. According to a gloss in Lee, Lind Mnd Fiile is Bri Ele. See also O'Donovan's note in his translation of Cormac's Glossary, s.v. Caill Crinmon, O'Curry's note on the "salmon of know- ledge", Battle of Magh Leana, p. 97, and the same scholar's Fate of the Children of Tvirenn, p. 175.

[34. Druim Cliab.] — Druim Cliab is ass araile ainmni[g]ud.

Ni ansa .i. Druim Cliab .i. is ann dognitha cleib churaig Curnnain Cosduib, dia luidh do togail Duine Bare f6>r Ainnle m«c Loai Lamfotai, dia mboi \:^\adain co leith occu.

^ In the MS. the words acht sons are misplaced h&t\ve.tn fodai'g axid ni.