362 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Infinite confusion, however, has resulted from these seeming con- 

 trarieties ; and Cicero has not failed to turn them to account in his 

 commentary on the fatidical pretensions of the Augurs : — 



"Bat what convenient or coherent consistency is there amongst Augiirs ? Ennius 

 says, agreeably to our augurial custom : 



' "When favoring Jove through clear skies thundered left.' 1 



But your Homeric Ajax (Ulysses, II. ix. 236), making some complaint, I know 

 not what, to Achilles concerning the ferocity of the Trojans, delivers himself 

 thus : 



' Good omens Jove bestows them, thundering right.'' 



So that what our Augurs deem better, and call ' left,' appears to the Greeks and 

 Barbarians as 'right.'" 



[Quae autem est inter Augures conveniens et conjuncta constantia ? Ad nostri 

 Augurii consuetudinem dixit Ennius : 



' Quum tonuit lsevum bene tempestate serena.' 



At Homericus Ajax (Ulysses, II. ix. 236), apud Achillem quserens de ferocitate 

 Trojanorum nescio quid, hoc modo nunciat : 



' Prospera Juppiter his dextris fulgoribus edit.' 



Ita nobis sinistra, videntur Gracis et barbaris dextra meliora." (De Div. 1. ii. 

 c. 39.)] 



Neither need the evSe£ia of Homer perplex our judgment. The 

 cups going right-hand- wise can only be said to go "from right to 

 left" through the nearer semicircle, but must be deemed to be borne 

 from left to right, if we regard the person of the cup-bearer. Never- 

 theless, in this exposition of Toland's, the fact appears which, had he 

 perceived its relevancy, might have given him the true clue for find- 

 ing his way out of Pliny's labyrinth ; namely, that Tuathpholl, or the 

 turn to the left, is deemed the " unhallowed" one, in contradistinction 

 to the desiul, or "sanctified tour round by the south," where, re- 

 membering that the spectator is supposed to regard the east, the turn 

 is necessarily dextrorsum. 



The mention of the " unhallowed" turn to the left will recal 

 various examples of things sinister in the double sense of being " left" 

 and "unlucky." I dare say there might be assembled under the 

 head wither 'shins, which, in Lowland Scottish, expresses the leftward 

 turn, a large array of examples from our folk-lore and popular phrase- 

 ology — from the witch-prayer and the humiliatory bend in heraldry to 

 the common expression " over the left shoulder." 



I am not aware of any direct evidence that in the Celtic practice 

 of " turning the stones," such as the clocha Ireca at Innismurry, when 

 imprecating evil on one another, the practisers of this rite turn them 

 sinistrorsum ; but suppose the fact is in accordance with the general 

 inauspiciousness ascribed to that movement. 



The bardic history of the Battle of Moyrath affords a notable ex- 

 ample. Sweeny, son of Colman, having incurred a curse, is assailed 



