Mac/lLISTkr— Temair Breg : Remains and Traditions of Tara. 291 



carved on the cross-slab of Reisk and on the alphabet-stone of Kihualkedar, 

 in Co. Kerry. 



All this is not so remote from the subject before us as the reader will 

 naturally be tempted to suppose. As we shall presently see, the sculptured 

 stones of the Picts, the representatives of the pre-Celtic bronze-age people 

 who founded Temair, have some light to throw on the problems of its early 

 history ; and it is important to understand clearly how it is here proposed to 

 interpret them. 



(b) The odium theologicum between adherents of rival religions takes the 

 form (1) of profane nicknames used by the supporters of one faith for the 

 gods and holy places of the other; (ii) of improper stories told of the opposi- 

 tion deities ; (iii) of miscellaneous forms of mockery. We have examples of 

 all three in Irish literature. Of the first, we may take as an example the 

 nickname Cromm Cruaich, of which we must speak later. There is no satis- 

 factory evidence that this was ever the real name of a deity. We may 

 compare also Diabul Ard and Tarothor (lege Torathor), already mentioned on 

 p. 257, and the names given in Cormac's Glossary to the wife of The Dagda. 

 The worshippers of the gods thus scornfully designated, retaliated by calling 

 the Sacred Figure on the Crucifix An Crochairc Tarrnochtuiyhthe, a name still 

 current in folk-tales told by good Christians, who are blissfully ignorant of 

 its true meaning. 1 Of the second form of religious spite we may take as an 

 illustration, from the Christian side, such a tale as The Second Battle of 

 Moytura,- where the deity known as The Dagda is placed in a number of ridi- 

 culous and, to speak mildly, undignified situations. On the pagan side we 

 may instance the story called Aided Diarmada, 3 in which the half-heathen 

 king Diarmait and Saint liuadan of Lorrha fling preposterous curses at one 

 another, those of the king being effective and those of the saint, at least in 

 what we may presume to have been the original version of the story, power- 



1 The meaning is obscured by translating it "The Naked Hangman." The word 

 crochaire, though now used principally in the sense "hangman," also means " n hanged 

 person," and is sometimes applied to the Figure on the Cross; cf. crel in dealbh croiche 

 ut 7 in Crochaire inidi, Book of Lisiuore !>!• 1> 1. 



2 Revue celtique, xii, 52. The reference in the text is to the story wi its present literary 

 form, which is an uncouth exhibition of Rabelaisian humour. It is doubtless founded on 

 much earlier traditional materials. 



3 Silva Gadelica, i, 72. This tale, at first a piece of rough humour, was later taken 

 seriously by writers unable to believe that the saint's curses could possibly be impotent ; 

 and they based upon it the legend of the destruction of Temair in or shortly after 563 A.D. 

 But, as Professor MacNeill has pointed out, this alleged desertion of Temair is altogether 

 inconsistent with the later history. On the other hand, the Prologue of /Vi/,,, 1 1. ngusso, 

 line 165, shows that Temair was of small importance in the ninth century, when that poem 

 was written. 



