217 
the other side of it rises one of the escars which abound in the parish. 
The highest part of this is called the Gallows Hill, and the marks of 
three graves are shown near the spot where the gallows stood. They are 
said to contain the remains of three warriors slain by Brian Carrach. 
Living, as this chieftain did, in a district which was wrested from a rival 
tribe, his life was naturally marked by vigilance, and his acts by decision 
and severity. The inaccessible nature of his territory enabled him to 
bid defiance to the English, but the emissaries of the O’Cahans were ever 
ready to take advantage of his difficulties; and tradition says that the 
two sons whom he left were assassinated by the Logans and Mac Shanes 
at a christening party near Skeg-na-holiagh. Certainly the stories 
which are told of him do not impress the mind with a notion of his 
gentleness. The following, which was related to Dr. O’ Donovan, when 
in this part of the country in 1834, and was communicated by him to the 
Ordnance Survey Office,* presents a fair specimen of the local estimate for 
this chief’s memory :—‘‘ Many stories are related of Brian Carrach 
O'Neill, who encroached upon O’ Kane, and possessed the south-east por- 
tion of the county. Brian would never hang one man alone, and if he 
found a man guilty of swinging by his law, he would give him a long 
day, until he could find another to dance along with him. One time he 
found a man guilty, and a long time passed over, but no companion 
could be found for him. At last a stranger came to visit the friars of a 
monastery within the territory, and Brian, riding out one day, viewed 
him, and they allow that he sent word to the abbot, requesting of him to 
lend him that man, and that he would send him one in return as soon as 
possible. The abbot, fearing to disobey, sent him the man, and Brian 
caused him to be hanged along with the convitt. Soon after this, he 
found two others guilty, one of whom attracted his notice as being re- 
markably comely. Brian spoke to him, saying, ‘I shall forgive you if 
you will marry a daughter that I have.’ ‘ Let’s see her,’ says the con- 
vict. Brian sends for the daughter; but as soon as the comely youth 
beheld her, he cried out, Suap tom, puap liom: ‘ Up with me, up 
with me.’ ‘By the powers,’ says Brian, ‘1 will not up with you, but she 
must go up.’ Upon which he hanged his own daughter for her ugliness, 
and gave the comely youth up to the abbot, in payment of the man he 
had borrowed from him to make up the even number.’ f 
The monastery above mentioned was, probably, the small friary which 
tradition reports to have existed in the little village of Tamlaght, about 
two miles distant, on the north-west. 
The Rey. Samvet Haveurton stated his views respecting the tidal 
currents in the Arctic Archipelago. In his opinion the Atlantic and 
* Londonderry Letters, dated Newtownlimavady, August 16, 1834. 
+A story very similar is recorded by Dr. Fitzgerald, in Mason’s “ Parochial Sur- 
vey,” of Henry Avrey O’Neill, whose castle was in the parish of Ardstraw.—Vol. i., 
p- 116. The Ardstraw youth said, Cur suas me, cur suas me. 
