Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/353

 Rh with them from Tir Tairngire was this: crimson nuts, and catkin apples, and fragrant berries; and as they passed through the cantred of Ui Fhiachrach by the Muaidh [the Moy in co. Sligo] one of the berries fell from them, and a quicken-tree grew out of that berry, and that quicken-tree and its berries have many virtues; for no disease or sickness seizes anyone that eats three berries of them, and they feel the exhilaration of wine and the satisfying of old mead; and were it at the age of a hundred years, he that tasted them would return again to be thirty years old.

"When the Tuatha Dé Danann heard that those virtues belonged to the quicken-tree, they sent from them a guard over it, that is, the Searbhan Lochlannach, a youth of their own people, that is a thick-boned, large-nosed, crooked-toothed, red-eyed, swart-bodied giant of the children of wicked Cain, the son of Naoi, whom neither weapon wounds, nor fire burns, nor water drowns, so great is his magic. He has but one eye only in the fair middle of his black forehead, and there is a thick collar of iron round that sriant's bodv, and he is fated not to die until there be struck upon him three strokes of the iron club that he has. He sleeps in the top of that quicken-tree by night, and he remains at its foot by day to watch it."

Two of the Clan Morna appear before Finn and ask to be admitted to their place among the Fianna. This will be granted if they will pay eric for the slaughter of Finn's father—and the eric is the head of a warrior (Diarmuid) or the full of a fist of the berries of the Quicken-tree of Dubhros.

Such is the history of the Quicken-tree of Dubhros and its guardian.

Now to turn to the version I heard in co. Leitrim.

The Fairies of Doolas Woods.

The fairies of the lake and the fairies of the land were to have a match of hurling, and if the fairies of the land were