Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/314

 3o6 Ktmo Meyer,

This is the first wonder in Todd, p. 193, but the standing corpses are not mentioned. Gir. ii, 6, tells 'the same wonder of Arann.

10. There is also a large water, which is called Logri (Loch Ree). And in that water lies a small island, in which are men of pure life whom one may call what he likes, either canonici or hermits. And they are in such great numbers that there is a full convent of them. Sometimes they are more numerous. And of that island it is told that it is wholesome and not visited by diseases, and men grow old later there than in other places on the mainland. And as soon as men grow so old, or sicken, so that they see the day of their end appointed by God, then they have to be moved out of it to some place on the land where they may die. For nobody may in that island lose his life from ill- ness ; though men may sicken in it, yet they die not before they are removed out of it.

I do not know which island in Loch Ree is meant. Nothing exactly like this is found in Todd. The 31st wonder (p. 217) comes nearest to it: 'The island of Loch Cre. . no sinner can die on it, and no power can bury him in it.' Gir. ii, 4, has a short remark about an ' insula viventium', where no one can die a natural death, and which he places on a lake in North Munster which would do for Loch Cre.

1 1. There is also a large lake, which in their tongue they call LoghcBrne (Lough Erne). In that lake are a great quantity of that kind of fish which men call salmon, and that fish goes in such numbers round their whole land that they have more than enough for their sustenance.

Cf. Gir. ii, 9.

12. There are also many islands in that lake, and one of them in their tongue they call Kcrtinagh. That island would be suitable to inhabit for many reasons, if men durst inhabit it. But it is related about this island that devils have as great power over one half of it as in hell itself. And at those times when daring men have done it