36 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



brought him straight to the portals of Crom Cruaich's celebrated sanctuary. 

 The Tripartite tells us that, in the journey up, the Saint's brooch fell from 

 his mantle, and was covered by heather. Though the soil is of good quality 

 resting on a wholesome limestone foundation, wide patches of heather 

 tenaciously persist to-day among the piasture fields sloping down along 

 Darraugh's sonthern face. 



The rath of Darraugh is elliptical in outline, and so constructed that its 

 longer axis appeared to me to point due north and south. The enclosure 

 has an area of, approximately, an acre and a quarter, statute measure. The 

 vallum, a clay fence, is well preserved ; but it is single, and, being un- 

 supported by fosse or other artificial protection, its strength would have 

 been very inadequate for defensive purposes. All the extant characters 

 would associate the initial, or golden, age of this remarkable rath with 

 religious, not with residential, functions. If its interior was the shrine of 

 Crom Cruaich, the famous idol, we may presume, would have been erected 

 on the axial line, perhaps near the frontal apse. In this position the awesome 

 image would have fulfilled geometrically the condition specified in the 

 Tripartite — a significant condition in its bearings on Crom's worship — "to 

 the south was its face." 



Looking down from Darraugh, the eye will not fail to rest on a quad- 

 rangular common skirting the road to Porturlan, a short distance north of 

 Bally magauran. Still clothed in its primeval heath, and intersected by a 

 narrow causeway which has every appearance of being a genuine relic of 

 antiquity, this neglected plot is the "fair green" of Ballymagauran, where 

 from time immemorial fairs have been held in May and in Xovember. A 

 roadway extending east from Ballymagauran, along the water's edge, simi- 

 larly served for a racecourse, from remotest ages until the annual race 

 meetings were discontinued during the recent world-war. These institutions, 

 so vividly reminiscent of the era of assembUes, would of themselves create a 

 presumption that Darraugh and its environs were once a focal centre of the 

 national life, a popular rendezvous of more than local celebrity. 



Viewed from Ballymagauran, Darraugh stretches back towards Porturlan 

 as an elongated ridge, or rick-shaped elevation. From the fair green, or old 

 assembly ground, its aspect is that of a veritable cruach. Seen from other 

 directions, Darraugh looks plump and smoothly rounded, assuming an air of 

 reposeful dignity, which increasing distance but enhances, as the observer 

 gazes back in his departing journey through Magh Sleacht. 



Eefraining from speculation on St. Patrick's doings m the sacred 

 enclosure, when the mighty Crom and his attendant sub-gods were 



