^8 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



stabbed the pillar and cut off its bead, and carried it away to another 

 place, "and still that stone remains." 



At Kilross, in Sligo, two men endeavoured to steal a magician's 

 ■cow ; but the owner pursued, and, striking tbem witb a wand, turned 

 tbcm into stones, wbich are still shown. It is possible that the " cow- 

 stone " and "thief-stone," near Gallerus, in Kerry, commemorate 

 some such legend. In the "Book of Feenagh," when the Druids of 

 Fergna " do corrguineacht " against St. Caillin, Aedh Dubh, son of 

 Fergna, orders his soldiers to attack them. " j^o," said Caillin, "we 

 will not exercise human power upon them ; but it is my will (if it be 

 the will of my God of Heaven and Earth) that the Druids may be 

 •changed into stones forthwith." Thereupon the Druids were imme- 

 <diately turned into forms of stone. Fergna, in his wrath at his son's 

 ■defection, and because " his Druids were transformed into the shape 

 of stone columns," brings on himself the vengeance of Heaven, and 

 •dies. The whole subject of Fearbreags, as John Windele has long 

 rsince noted, is much in want of elucidation. It crops np in Monaghan, 

 Cork, Clare, Tipperary, and, as we have seen, in lona and elsewhere 

 an Scotland. The name is applied to a stone circle near Kimalta 

 (Keeper Hill), in Tipperary, and to a cairn at Kilcolman, in Cork.' 



Natural rocks, called Fearbreags, occur at Fanygalvan, in the 

 3un'en, in the hills near Broadford, and at other places in Clare. 



Mr. Borlase notes its connexion with the name and legend of the wolf 

 (breag) and were-wolf, and that wolf-names are connected with cairns 

 and tumuli in Germany (as, e.g., the wolf hiigel) and Bohemia, as well 

 as in Ireland." 



It is, however, possible that tbe pillars at Classagh, like tliose not 

 far from the Fearbrega Hock of Fanygalvan, form some long-forgotten 

 tribal boundary rather than sepulchral monuments, though, in the 

 historic period, they seem to have coincided only with townland 

 borders. It will be remembered how Cuchullain, when mortally 

 wounded in battle, went to drink at a lake. " j!^ow a great mearing 

 went westward from the lake, and his eye lit on it ; and he went to a 

 pillar-stone which is in the plain, and he put his breast-girdle round 



' " Brendaniana, or St. Brendan the Voj*ager in Story and Legend," Kev. Denis 

 ■O'Donoghiie (ed. 1893), pp. 16, 17. See also " Hattle of Moy Leana," p. 31 n.; 

 "Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland," Col. Wood-Martin, vol. ii., p. 214 ; and 

 " The Book of Feenagh" (ed. W. Hennessy and D. H. Kelly, 1875), p. 117. 



* " Dolmens of Ireland," vol iii., pp. 912-915. See also some valuable notes 

 ■on the name in Dr. Joyce's " Irish Names of Places." Series ii., pp. 411, 412. 



