Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/489

 The Edinburgh Dinnshenchas, 481

adbeb iar suidhiu ;j focreas a Urt i nArd Macha, j focer a gubha, ^ roclannad a lia. X^nde Ard Macha.

AtA^/mairc Mc7(^/^a marglic tri fhis, ratha na raidmid, tuirthe^>^/a trimsa Cuailghne fa gnim ndimsa nimuaibre.

Ard Macha, whence is it ?

Not hard (to say). Macha, wife of Named, son of Agnoman, died there, and it was the twelfth plain which was cleared by Nemed, and it was bestowed on his wife that her name might be over it, and 'tis she that saw in a dream, long before it came to pass, all the evil that was done in the Driving of the Kine of Cualnge. In her sleep there was shown to her all the evil that was suffered therein, and the hardships and the wicked quarrels : so that her heart broke in her. Whence Ard Macha, " Macha's Height."

Macha, the very shrewd, beheld Through a vision — graces which we say not — Descriptions of the times (?) of Cualgne — Twas a deed of pride, not of boasting.

Or, Macha, daughter of Aed the Red, son of Badurn : 'tis by her that Emain Macha was marked out, and there she was buried when Rechtaid Red-arm killed her. To lament her Oenach Macha, " Macha's Assembly," was held. Whence Macha Magh.

Aliier. Macha, now, wife of Crunn, son of Agnoman, came there to run against the horses of King Conor. For her husband had declared that his wife was swifter than the horses. Thus then was that woman pregnant : so she asked a respite till her womb had fallen, and this was not granted to her. So then she ran the race, and she was the swiftest. And when she reached the end of the green she brings forth a boy and a girl — Fir and Fi'al were their names — and she said that the Ulaid would abide under debility of childbed whensoever need should befall them. So thence was the debility on the Ulaid for the space of five days and four nights (at a time) from the era of Conor to the reign of Mai, son of Rochraide (a.d. T07). And 'tis said that she was Grian Banchure, " the Sun of Womanfolk," daughter of Midir of Bri Leith. And after this she died, and her tomb was raised on Ard Macha, and her lamentation was made, and her pillar-stone was planted. Whence is -4 rd?yl/rt^//<2, " Macha's Height."

Also in BB. 400 b 49 ; H. 61 b ; Lee. 510 b ; and R. 117 b i. But none of these copies contain the account of the first Macha's dream, or the quatrain referring thereto. That the second Macha marked out Emain is told also in Cormac's Glossary, and LL. 20 b 48. The story of the third Macha's race with Conor's horses, and of the birth of her twins, is related more fully in LL. 125 b 42, whence it has been published by the late Sir Samuel Ferguson in a note to his Congal, pp. 189, 190, with a Latin version, and by Prof. Windisch in the Bcrichtt- of the Royal Saxon Gesellschaft derWissenschaften, 1884, pp. 336-347, with a German translation.