Macalistkk — Temair Breg : Remains and Traditions of Vara. 309 



fully to divine or sacred personages is to prefix the possessive pronoun mo 

 to their names. Donn, thus referred to, would he called Mo-Don n. When 

 we turn to the Geography of Ptolemy, we find that he knew the Slaney under 

 the name Modonnos: from which we infer that there was also a Milesian 

 tradition that the god of this river led the invaders. 



It is unlikely that both the aborigines and the Celtic invaders should have 

 ascribed their conquests to the same leader. That is to say, one or other 

 version is the original story, the alternative story being imitated from it. On 

 a later page of this paper I hope to set forth some other, quite independent, 

 reasons for believing that it was the Celtic incomers who landed at the 

 Slaney estuary. It follows, then, that the Fir Bolg story is merely a 

 corruption, the Slaney being put at the head of the Fir Bolg list because the 

 same river, under another name, occupies a corresponding position in the 

 Milesian list. Slainge is therefore to be expunged, and it may well be that 

 Eochu mac Eire should replace him. This would bring the two lists into yet 

 closer correspondence. 



But, even without any such manipulation, the links are strong enough to 

 bind the lists together. Notwithstanding the difference of names, we have 

 before us two different versions of the story of one dynasty. The difference 

 of names, at first sight difficult to account for, is really a very simple matter. 

 Personal names are the most fluid of all folk-lore elements, and one and the 

 same story told throughout a country will lie fitted to a John in one shire, to 

 a James in another, and to a Thomas in a third. The story of the dynasty 

 before us was enshrined in a folk-tale. Different narrators in different parts 

 of the country, while preserving the incidents, were troubled with lapses of 

 memory where the names were concerned. The tales were then collected by 

 the investigators (if we may so call them) on whose work the " official 

 history " was based. Unfortunately those dreary people had no interest in 

 anything but the skeleton of history — the names and the dates. They 

 extracted these from the tales before them, not troubling to notice that the 

 different versions of the history were not independent of one another. 1 



The suggestion may further be made that the folk-tale was a popular 

 version of a lost epic. Such a composition, being written in the obscure 

 archaic language of the druidic poems, would in its literary form be the 

 exclusive property of the men of learning ; only its general contents would be 

 known to the people at large. 



1 It is only fair to add, that -they were very probably influenced by their desire to 

 maintain Christian faith and morals unalloyed. It is <|uite possible that the folktale was 

 offensive from this point of view, and that the only "safe" parts of it were the names 

 and dates. The curious details about Slanoll's burial were perhaps in the original story; 

 the other recorded "facts" are clearly etymological adaptations. 



