Westropp — The Earthworks, cVc, of S. E. Co. Linnrirk. 135 



He kindles five streams of magic fire, from which his sons, the fathers of the 

 Delbna tribes, spring, 1 and they are affiliated to the Dal Cais, undoubtedly 

 without old warrant, for a mere political end. The horrible, and equally 

 archaic, legend 2 of the worm of Cian seems transferred from the god Cian to 

 the human eponymus of the Cianachta, who bad also to be affiliated to the 

 Dal Cais. These show that, under political stress, tribal pedigrees, like the 

 later " Eoll of Battle Abbey," had a caddis-worm-like tendency to attach 

 extraneous rubbish to themselves. 



Lastly, the simple churchman of the pre-Norse times (who tolerated god 

 tales, and, at most, tried "to lure them into decency") was replaced two 

 centuries after by a priest full of the evil and wrongs of Norse heathenism, so 

 gods had to become human — kings, wizards, jesters — anything but "gods." 

 The old god reappeared at different intervals in archaic literature, so the later 

 reviser made him not one man but many. It is with these transformed gods 

 and their local cult us that I am most concerned in the first half of this paper, 

 as I am more concerned with the tribes and their legends and history in the 

 second. Both studies are needed to elucidate the character of the earthworks 

 (residential or sepulchral) of the ancient Clin mhail mhic Ugaine in south- 

 eastern Co. Limerick. 3 



(B) — The Gods in Cur. 



We ventured to embark on the dark and stormy sea of Irish mythology 

 to search for the uncharted subject of the local sanctuaries in Cliu at Cush, 

 Knockainey, and Clogher. We established the objects of our search ; but a 

 mass of material of equal importance remains about other places and gods,* 

 both on the ground and in our literary sources, so we cannot leave it aside, 

 but must deal with, and leave it to the amendment of the students of its 

 obscure and difficult subject. 



It takes courage to attempt to deal with the Irish gods. The very word 

 causes a nervous feeling that one's work might get confused with the work 

 of the older antiquaries, who sat and created, without study, visions of 

 Phoenician, Cuthite, Indian, serpent-, cow-, and even pig-gods worshipped 



1 New Ir. Rev., xxvi, p. 130 : xxv, p. 73. 2 Hib. Lect., iv. p. 3!i2. 



3 Cliu and Luchair evidently overlapped in the debatable land of Coshlea. Luchair 

 extending to the east of Cenn Febrat and to Tul Tuinne, Dun Tultha (or Tonntinna), on 

 Loch Derg (Metr. Diud S., x, p. 239). Gleulara, named in the " Battle of Magh Leana" 

 as apparently near Killarney, is more probably Glenlara on Cenn Febrat, to which a 

 defeated prince flying from Magh Feimhin to the south coast at Beare might more 

 naturally have sought temporary refuge among its tangled oak woods and streams. The 

 territory of Curoi mac Daire extended between Knockainey and Slievereagh (Mescn 

 Ulad, p. 17). 



4 Supra, xxxiv, p. 53. 



R.I. A. PR0C., VOL. XXXIV, SECT. C. [21] 



