224 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



and whirlpools the forms of the Sirens, Charybdis, and Scylla, with her 

 barkinc waves ; the tutor of Xero foretold the loosening of its bonds and the 

 discovery of an unknown continent ;. while even in the deserts, far from its 

 shores, the Arabian prophet pictured " black night on the deep, which wave on 

 wave doth cover, cloud upon wave, gloom upon gloom." Much more so the Irish, 

 on the outskirts of the known world, felt the wonder that we cannot shelter 

 oiu-selves from, even by knowledge of natural laws ; and their scholars were 

 not unacquainted with what the Scriptures and the classics had to telL 



The coast-dwellers saw the mirage or the cloud-bank brooding on the 

 water ; to them it was a floating island,' possibly to be disenchanted, as Bofin 

 had been. They saw the foam spring high out to sea, and sti'ange reflections 

 below the waves : it was a magic land that lay there, and the gold-roofed towei-s 

 and domes glinted deep under the waters" ; nay, it rose over the waters once 

 in seven yeai-s, as men could attest. The ships of the Danaan and Sidli' 

 (demons and gods) sailed visible to all, reality and no mirage to the older 

 tribes. The current suddenly foamed in a long tideway, or twisted and writhed ; 

 and to the onlookers it was clear that some vast monster swam or turned 

 beneath it ; while those lost at sea or in the surf, trying to land, were devoured 

 (thought the survivors) by monsters. The Irish, of course, had no 

 monopoly of such views. Even at the end of the sixteenth century Hakluyt* 

 conti-adicted those who said that the currents " bee swallowed by and cast 

 up againe by the breathing of Demogorgon." 



The Irish went farther ; they regarded the waves as sentient prophetic 

 beings, for, in our oldest writers, " the great waves of Erin '' — Rudhraigh, 

 Gliodhna,^ and Tuath — raised their deep voices to foretell disaster and crime, 

 and the wave of Malbay mourned for the death of Keane of Ross, so late as 

 in the reign of George II. To the early bards the waves were the white- 

 maned hoi-ses, the silver-homed stags, and the many-hued salmon of 



1 So also on the opposite shore of the Old World the Chinese had legends of ' • Isles of the Blessed," 

 700 miles eastward in the Yellow Sea ; places of everlasting spring, gladness, and beauty. Their 

 secret was rerealed to the Emperor Tshe Huan Ti about b.c. 219. Youths went out to find the Isle, 

 and saw it in roseate light on the horizon, but storms drove them away. Similar stories are told in 

 Japan of the happy isle of Oraisan, far out to sea. — Xansen, " In Xorthern Mists," vol. i, p. 377. 



-Legend of Kilstuithin, infra ; also " Voyage of Bran " (Eerue Celtiqiie, x, 1SS9, p. 55 1. 



^ " Demon ships " are even recorded in early Annals. See under A.D. 648 (Annals of Ulster) ; see 

 also A. F. M., 744 ; also for an appearance at the Fair of Tailltenn in a.d. 763 and a.d. 956, " Ships 

 sailing in the air " ; see " Book of Leinster," p. 274 a 37; Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1859, 

 vol. Tii, p. 137 ; and "Irish Mirabilia" in the Speculum Segale (1250), Kuno Meyer, Eriu, vol. iv, 

 p. VI. 



4 " Voyages," vol. ii, p. 9. 



^ Dr. Joyce, " Irish Iv.ames of Places," vol. i, part ii, chap, v, probably Glandore, Co. Cork. 

 Tuath was probably at Dundalk Sir Samuel Ferguson, so rich in allusions to ancient Irish beliefs, 

 gives this legend in " The Tain Quest," " Eoared and wailed white Cleenagh's wave — fiose the 

 onn of Inver Eory." 



