D ALTON — Oromm Cruaich of Magh Sleacht. 45 



being misled by Lauigan, who was misled by Seward, who was blinded by 

 Beauford." Two or three years later O'Donovan, being then engaged in 

 preparing a catalogue of the Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity 

 College, noted, in his description of Manuscript H 2. 6 — that is, the Irish " Life 

 of St. Mogue of Ferns " — " I searched the two Brefneys for the situation of 

 Magh Sleacht, on which stood the chief pagan Irish idol, Crom Cruach, but 

 have failed, being misled by Lanigan, who had been misled by Seward, who 

 had been blinded by the impostor Beauford, who placed this plain in the 

 county of Leitrim."' Some ten years subsequently O'Donovan published 

 his monumental edition of the " Four Masters " ; and four times successively, 

 in his notes to those massive volumes, he defines the district, substantially in 

 the same terms, as the low-lying portion of Tullyhaw Barony, in which 

 Ballymagauran is situated. 



In a note printed in "The Journal of the Kilkenny ArchEeologieal 

 Society "- O'Donovan wrote, a few years before his death : — " The place at 

 which this idol stood has not yet been identified. It stood near the river 

 Gathard, in the plain of Magh Sleacht, in the barony of Tullyhaw, and county 

 of Cavan, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the village of Ballymagauran." 

 This was probably O'Donovan's latest published reference to the subject, and 

 it is utterly at variance with his supposed abandonment of Tullyhaw as the 

 area of search for Magh Sleacht.' So far as his literary remains indicate, 

 O'Donovan never deviated from the conviction that the true site of Crom 

 Cruaich lay in the neighbourhood of Ballymagauran ; and since his death, 

 in 1861, two generations of scholars have, with but a very few dissentients, 

 testified their faith in his topographical insight by unquestioningly adopting 

 that judgment.^ 



Since O'Donovan's time two investigators, and — so far as I know — two 

 only, have made personal search for the site occupied by Crom Cruaich. One 

 was the Eev. Canon John O'Hanlon, the learned author of the " Lives of the 

 Irish Saints," and the other was the Most Piev. John Healy, d.d., Archbishop 



'The reference here is to William Beauford's " Map of Antient Ireland during the 

 Middle Ages," inserted in Vallancey's " Collectanea dePiebusHibernicis" (vol. iii, p. 252). 

 The map places " Magh Sleucht " under Conmaicne, and west of Granard — that is, partly 

 in Co. Longford ; but in the topographical glossary which follows the place is said to be 

 situated near Fenagli {ibid., p. 088). Colonel Wood-Martin, still more fatally blinded by 

 the map, locates the idol " in the plain of Mag Slechi, near Granard " ("Traces of the 

 Elder Faiths," vol. ii, p. 208). 



- Vol. i (New Series), 1856-7 ; note at p. 216. 



3 Hyde's ' ' Lit. Hist. , " p . 84. 



^ W. Stokes, for example ("Rev. Celt.,"xvi, p. 36) ; D'Arbois de Jubainville ("Ii-ish 

 Myth. Cycle," p. 60) ; Bury (" St. Patrick," p. 306); Hogan (" Onom. Goed.," p. 530) ; 

 Joyce (" Social History," i, p. 276) ; E. Gwynn (" Metr. Dinds.," Part HI, p. 550). 



