Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/121

Rh covery of the worship of Buddha and the phallus or Bod call this Sith Budha! Another important sacred mound was the inauguration place of Forradh mac n Amalgadh in Tirawley. A cairn or tumulus and stone circle near Killala and Rathfran is still called "Forry." The cairn at Kilgallighan near Dookegan and a mound in Aranmore may be of this nature. I was told as much of the last, but on uncertain "authority."

On Inishturk Mr. Tim Toole (Austin) in 1911 showed me two fairy palaces. The first (called Shee or Síd) was a hill fort of large blocks, on a bold rocky knoll, like the fairy fort of Croaghateeaun (Cruach an t sidéan) near Ballinalackin, Co. Clare. Only part of the foundation of the ring wall of great white quartz blocks remains. The second síd is a notable natural rock called "Campulnamuckagh." It has been asserted that this is Teampul na muice, but I was told on the spot "no, there was no church here," so leave the word "campul" for further discussion by philologists. The pig may be supernatural, like the "boar" from which the island (Turk Island and Inishturk) seems to be named.

There were two shallow lakes down a long slope, the outer first cut a drain through its lower ridge, then a stream cut down the inner ridge, in a straight face with a doorway-like recess. The whole is strangely artificial in aspect; I hear there is a chimney-like shaft on the top of the pinnacle above the "door." A young man foolishly threw some sods of turf (peat) down the first in bravado. Not long after his leg began to swell and a dull pain developed. He had to take to bed and was pining away in cruel agony. A poor "wise woman" called to ask for charity, and being well treated (when do the Irish peasants refuse to aid those poorer than themselves?), she undertook to cure the lad. She went out gathering herbs, made a hot poultice and soon the swelling broke open and "she took out a thing like a blade of grass," bound up the limb and he soon